Remebrance: The Story of Amnesia
by Justin Hollydale
Summary: Chapter 7, wow I finished it. Time has not been my friend recently and more inspiration has come but I have not had time until recently to write anything. Sorry about that. Anyways enjoy chapter 7.
1. 1st Book of Amnesia

Ranma 1/2

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I own none of these characters, just the story that I have put them into.

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Remembrance

Chapter 1

The entrance to the warehouse was locked, as it should have been as he had not entered through the front. That would have been a stupid thing to do in these situations, he was supposed to be silent. He was not here to start a fight, he was here to gain access to information that could possibly help him find some answers. That was all he had left right now was answers, he needed to rid himself from the nagging guilt that was constantly in his head. There was no way he could do that if he had no way to find answers. In this dark warehouse he had been promised answers and that was why he was here. If anyone found him here he would lose any reason for being here, and in turn he would have to live with the guilt for a long time.

He was wearing a gray colored jump suit with pockets all over to hold whatever he needed. Usually they were unused but this time he had a very important disk in one of the pockets. It was not so much that it was important right now but after he accomplished his objective that would change drastically. All he needed to do was get to the computer that held the information he needed.

The place he needed to look was in the upper portion of the factory. That meant he needed to get from the front to the top of the warehouse without being seen by anyone. As he approached the stairs leading up he could hear people walking slowly on patrol. He would have to be extremely careful in order to get by these guards. If he even touched the metal grating it would give his position away. That meant that he had to find an alternate way up to the upper platform and then make his way across the warehouse. Climbing up a nearby rope he got in position above catwalk and used the free hanging rope to swing over to the catwalk and grab onto it. He did not get on top of the catwalk though, instead he grabbed onto the bottom of it and started to move hand over hand using the grated catwalk as a handhold. This was difficult not only because of the strength it needed but also because the catwalk was serrated for traction. This meant that every time he wrapped his hand around it the serrated part of the catwalk would dig into his hand. By the time he reached the other side there was blood running down his hands from being punctured.

That was of little concern to him right now, what was important was that he got what he was looking for. It should be in the office near here, on a computer somewhere inside the room. Silently opening the door he slipped inside and ducked behind a desk just as a guard passed by with his light. He watched as the light scanned the room and then faded away before he stood up from behind the desk and drew the blinds in the room. It was the only thing he could do to not immediately give away that he was in the room. Quickly he booted up the computer and waited for what seemed like the longest time before the program booted up.

He had to do this quickly so that nobody would discover the blinds had been drawn. Slipping the disk out of his pocket and putting it into the computers floppy drive slot he found the file and started to download the file. Now it was just a waiting game.

The file was about halfway done copying when they found the office with the blinds drawn. Cursing he quickly made his way to a place behind the door and waited for it to open. As the first guard entered he grabbed the man around the neck and twisted quickly. There was a sick cracking sound as the man's neck broke and he fell limply to the ground. Quickly, he grabbed the floppy disk out of the drive and ran out the door. He knew that the file on the disk was not complete, he only hope he had enough to get the answers he required. He did not have time to climb back under the catwalk and make his way back the same way he came, so he jumped up on the railing and ran quickly along it so as not to make blatant noise. Unfortunately the lights came on right as he got to the stairs of the catwalk. Then his eyes widened as he saw one of the guards hit a button on the wall and klaxons started to sound. He decided jumping would be better than taking the stairs so he did just that.

Right as he jumped however there was a giant explosion and his world went white with pain. He had heard that the warehouse was rigged with explosives for emergencies but he did not think they would blow the whole thing up. That had been a mistake on his part, the last thing he thought before he blacked out was that he at least got the file he was looking for. His body fell limply in the nearby river as debris rained down around him.

"Sir, the job is done," a voice on a speaker crackled in the darkness, "Agent RS1 is dead."

"Did you see a body?" an old gravelly voice in the darkness asked, slow in the way of an old person who did not have enough circulation.

"No, Sir, but he has to be dead. Nobody could survive that!"

"Fool, you are useless," the old voice said as there was gunfire over the line and then the line went dead, "Just can't get good help these days."

It was some time before his body surfaced and eventually caught on the land about two miles down the river. He washed on the beach unconscious. Later he was found by a young couple passing by on the beach and admitted to a hospital. It was a full year before he was checked out of the hospital after recovering. Still he did not have any memories of who he was or where he had been. The explosion had given him amnesia, though he did not let the doctors know that. They thought he was just some bum that had no family left. They had provided him with a new pair of jeans and a t-shirt, or rather he had stolen them from a dead person figuring they would not need them, and sent him on his way. He had stopped to pick up the belongings they could recover from his torn up suit, destroyed from the explosion. He had no ID to identify himself, all that he had was a disk and a small white card with a magnetic strip on it.

This was the smallest of his problems however, he now had to find a way to earn some money and then try to find out who he was. He had been told that he had been found on the beach unconscious but that was all they knew. The told him he was severely burned when he first came in but that told him little about who he was. They said they had provided the latest in healing surgery, it turned out that the white card they found was a credit card with quite a bit of money on it. However, they had told him that the surgery had been expensive and all he had left was a thousand dollars. He could tell from his looks that he was

Japanese and they had remade his face and the other burnt parts of his body to look exactly as they had before. That meant that Japanese was his nationality and he also knew how to speak the language. Of course he found that he also knew how to speak American at the same time. He did not know what was going on here, but he had a feeling that as soon as he found out who he was the answer would all fall into place.

As he thought these thoughts, he turned a corner to see a girl fighting in front of a school. Bunches of boys were trying to beat her but they were all getting destroyed by the girl. As he studied her he could see that she had certain flaws to her form but nothing that would be devastating to the level of fighters in this crowed. If he were fighting her she would have been down on the ground in seconds flat. Of course how he knew this he had no idea, all he knew was that he could fight damn well, it was mostly intuition.

The girl broke down the mob and proceeded inside the gates of the school in front of which she had been fighting. He was about to walk on until he felt something at the edge of his mind tug. Realizing that it was a danger sense that was coming from the direction the girl was headed, he ran towards the gates of the school, jumped over the wall and landed just in time to see a man with a wooden sword standing in front of the girl. He was talking some gibberish that was Japanese and yet it was archaic. He had trouble understanding the words as this man was putting them together. Then the man seemed to be through with talking and made to raise his wooden sword. He did not want to get directly involved so he picked up a random rock from the ground and threw it at the man's head. There was a sickening crack as the rock connected and the man went cross eyed and fell to the ground.

Quickly he retreated back over the wall, unaware that he was being watched from above by more eyes than he intended. A young woman with short brown hair excused herself and ran off, telling one of the other girls to cover for her while she was gone. The girl nodded and the young woman with short brown hair ran off, destination unknown.

Back on the ground he was walking away from the school, he would need to find another job soon if he wanted to find out who he was. He was about a mile away from the school when he noticed that someone was following him. Ducking behind a tree he waited for the person to make their was past him before he jumped out and grabbed them, jumping into an alley with the person in his arms, hand covering their mouth. It happened within seconds and the street was vacant without a sound.

He stopped in the alley and waited to see if anyone had seen what he had done. It was not his smoothest grab ever but it had needed to be done to find out why this person was following him. Looking down he could see that it was a young woman in his arms, kicking and struggling against his strength. Lowering his head to her ears, he slightly lightened the pressure on the girl.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he said quietly, "but if you so much as look like you're going to scream I'll knock you out. I'm going to let you go now, stay calm please."

The girl nodded slightly and he let her go, dropping her to the ground as he was a bit taller than her, "You better not be some pervert."

He smiled slightly at that, a flash of... something went across his mind, "No, I just want to know why you were following me."

"I was wondering who you were," the girl said, "you helped out my cousin back there and the way you hit that pervert was amazing."

Smiling he patted her head in a patronizing way, "Heh, you're a funny kid.

You're cousins style did seem familiar though, would you mind if I talked to you're parents."

The girl smiled slyly, "Well that depends on the amount of money you have, my usual price is about a thousand yen, but I'm going to double that just because you were being patronizing."

His eyes widened slightly at her remark, this kid was sharp, "Well that's fine, just give me until you're done with school to get it. I have no cash on me right now, only have a card on me right now."

"Fine, I'll give you the information then," the girl said, "in fact you can follow me home so you don't get lost that way."

"Sounds like a deal, I get you the money and you take me to see you're parents," he said.

"Sure, but be sure to have the two-thousand yen or no deal," the girl said.

It was some time later before he got the money and returned to the school. His timing turned out to be perfect, the girl exited her school just as he arrived.

He handed her the money without a word and she counted it before leading him down the street to where her parents were. It took them a while of walking, he made jokes about the girl and she match his jokes blow for blow. This girl was definitely a sharp one, it reminded him of someone he knew a long time ago.

Since he had lost his memory all he could see was a flash of a face, nothing concrete, but there was definitely something there.

After walking for a while they finally arrived at the girl's home and she knocked on the door. After a while of waiting she took out a key and opened the door. She told him that her mother was not home yet but he was welcome to make himself at home. He thanked her and asked if it was okay to use the shower, she said that it was fine as long as he made it quick. She pointed him upstairs and he nodded and climbed the stairs to the shower room. The house was not set up like the normal Japanese Dojo he knew, it was more westernized. He opened the door and the shower room was right there, no room to take off his close before entering. Shrugging he took off his clothes and turned on the shower, waiting for the water to get hot before getting in.

Downstairs he was not aware of the girl's mom coming home, nor was he aware that the girl did not tell her mom that he was in the shower room. It was not unusual for her mom to take a shower after a long day at work. She always did it to relax and rid herself of the memories of the "stupid people" she had to deal with at work. From the times she had gone with her mom to work, the girl knew she could put on a pretty good mask as an ice queen, but she always lost it when she came home. The girl had learned to copy the look her mom put on for her own business dealings at school. Still, she knew that home was a place where you could let that mask down. It was a kind of safe haven to come home to.

The girl listened idly as her mom started to complain about the same thing she complained about every day. Finally she sighed and said she was going to take a shower and relax. Had the girl been paying more attention she would have realize what the implications of such a statement were before it was too late.

Desperately the girl scrambled upstairs though she had a feeling that she was already too late, this feeling was only amplified by the scream that came as she made it to the top of the stairs.

The woman watched as her daughter put on the normal look that said she was not really listening to her. She did not care, she knew her tirades were boring after a while of listening to them. Sighing, she stormed upstairs to take a shower as she usually did after work. In truth she usually took about three showers a day, on average. She made her way upstairs and was so intent on the bad day she had that she did not notice that sound of the shower shutting off.

The woman did not even realize that anyone was in the shower until she opened the door and saw him standing with a towel wrapped around his waist. Water ran from his hair and down his well muscled body, pooling on the floor beneath the area he stood. It was his face that really got to her, a familiar crooked and sheepish smile. His face seemed to say, "Hey, sorry about this".

The fact that he was there at all did not make her scream, it was the fact that she knew who he was that made her scream. That should not be though, she had thought he was dead, all information she had gotten about him after he left said he wad died mysteriously. The fact was that this man should not be standing in front of her right now. So she screamed and fainted, because she thought she had seen a ghost.

She did not see the man's surprised look as the woman screamed and fainted. He quickly rushed over and caught her in his arms, forgetting that all he had on was a towel. He made his way downstairs, past the girl he had met earlier that met amazingly like her mother, and laid her down on the couch. Once that was done, he remembered that he was dressed only in a towel and made his way back upstairs to put on his pants and t-shirt. When he went back downstairs the woman had already woken up and was staring at him shakily.

"Ranma?" the woman asked with a disbelieving tone.

He raised an eyebrow slightly at the question, "Who do you think I am, and I'm only asking because I have no idea."

The woman stood and walked up to him, inspecting him closely, "Are you Ranma Saotome? You look exactly like this kid I knew eleven years ago."

"Even if I was this person you're asking about, I could not tell you," he said apologetically, "I only have a floppy disk and a blank credit card to my name. Whatever that is."

"The resemblance is uncanny," the woman said as she inspected him closer, "My name is Nabiki, do you recognize that name at all?"

Again there was that flash across his mind, something seeping to the surface but nothing he could grasp, "That sounds familiar, but I still can't really say for sure if I know you."

"So you say you have amnesia," Nabiki asked, "you don't even know how you got it?"

He shook his head, "Nope."

"You said you have a floppy disk, can I see it?" the woman asked.

He reached in his pocked and tossed it casually to her, she reached up and plucked it out of the air with little effort, "Thanks."

"Not a problem, that was a nice catch by the way," he commented, recognizing some skill hidden beneath the surface of her business facade, "You don't look like a martial artist."

The woman sat down at the computer she had in the living room and inserted the disk after booting it up, "After you disappeared mysteriously daddy, excuse me, father, started to teach us again. He said that since you were gone we needed to be able to take care of ourselves. That attitude died down after it became apparent that all the chaos followed you out of Nerima when you left... This is interesting."

He walked forward and looked at the contents of the disk she had brought up on the screen, "It looks like an experiment to make a super solder, it uses a strain called RS1, whatever that is. Whoever was making this was close to succeeding when you got this information. Unfortunately the file gets cut off near the end, I think that this file never finished downloading."

Looking at the screen, he read what they had of the file, "So you think that this was from a company that was trying to make super soldiers. What reason would they be doing this for?"

"I don't know but I think you have more of a link to this than you know," Nabiki said seriously, "It says her 'patient has responded well to the sample of altered DNA, agent RS1 is ready for a test' sounds like the agent was a test. It also says that they were planning on destroying the soldier if test was successful. This would prevent any information leakage, a picture file was downloaded."

Nabiki opened the file and the picture appeared on the screen as a stern man with long black hair and blue eyes. They both stared with awe at the picture that was on the screen, unnoticing of Nabiki's daughter coming up behind them.

"Hey, that's you mister," the girl said, "Why are you so serious there?"

Unable to stand anymore, he backed up, stumbling on a piece of furniture and landing on the couch heavily, "I'm a copy? Damn, no wonder I have no memories, well this sucks."

Nabiki shook her head and read a little more, "No, you may be the original but you are not a copy. It says here that the host was not a clone, in fact they took DNA from the original more than they altered him. The last part I can read makes it sounds like the other trials were utter failures."

"If I am the original and I'm not a clone," he said looking at her slowly, "that means that they still altered me in some way. For all I know it could be something that turns me into a murderer."

"That may be a little over dramatic," Nabiki said levelly, "I don't think it's that bad."

"Either way, this only hinders us," he threw his hands up, "there is no way to know for sure about this."

Nabiki nodded, "I agree, you have that card on you don't you? Let's take a trip to the bank."

"Why?"

Nabiki shrugged at the question, "Maybe I can take a look at the card you have and see where it's from. It's worth a try."

The two of them stood up and made for the door before it occurred to Ranma that they were forgetting about something, "What about you're daughter?"

"Oh, well she can come with us," Nabiki said with a shrug, "there shouldn't be any problems with that. Come on Hitomi"

The girl nodded and followed the two of them out the door, this was a long shot on Nabiki's part. If that card did hold information about the user then it would be useful in finding out where Ranma had been for the last ten years. If they could not find anything there would be no choice but to accept that there was no clue as to whom this man was. The disk she had looked at had held a lot of information that she had withheld from Ranma. Most of this was due to the fact that she did not want to drop too much on him at once. Such as the fact that most of the soldiers had been used to eliminate anyone that went against the group that created them. To get down to the dirt, he had killed people that could be considered completely innocent. Whatever had become of the Ranma she once knew, if this was in fact him, it was gone once he joined the company.

Though she theorized that most of this was due to the fact that they altered parts of his brain so that he would not think twice about killing people. Such alterations had apparently been temporary as his reaction to possibly being a killer had attested to.

One of the biggest mysteries was the reason for created such super soldiers. She could understand wanting protection, but having an army of super soldiers seemed like overkill. There had to be some other reason for creating these genetic beings other than protection. That very reason could be on the part of the file that had not been downloaded. If only she could get the rest of that file she could find out what was going on here. It seemed that she would have to settle for what she had right now, she would worry about it later. Besides, they were at the bank now, she had to focus on building up from the smaller leads. Nabiki was confident everything would fall into place.

Walking into the building, she went up to the teller and handed them the card. Nabiki explained what she wanted and the teller nodded in understand. Swiping the card, the teller waited, frowned at the machine, and swiped the card again. After a couple more swipes the information on the card finally came up. Not only was there information about how much money Ranma had in the account, there was also a picture of him with his code name underneath it, RS1. There was a note that said that he could also work as a double agent somehow. It did not go into detail but it did say that it involved a simple change. Nabiki had her suspicions about what that change was but that theory could wait until later. Nabiki thanked the teller once she had gotten all the relevant information off the card, and she walked outside where him and Hitomi where waiting.

Nabiki smiled as she saw Ranma and Hitomi playing, Ranma sitting on the steps while Hitomi stood in front of him, "I tell you that was not how it happened!"

Ranma laughed and placed his hand behind his head nervously, "I only call it how I see it. All I know is you were acting awfully nice to that boy."

"You're incorrigible," Hitomi yelled at him.

"Maybe," Ranma put his hand to his chin in mock thought, "I think your denying this a little too much though."

Hitomi saw her mom and stormed up to her, "Mother, you're friend is making fun of me!"

Nabiki chuckled and looked at Ranma, who stared back at her expectantly, "Oh, listen to you. You sound like a pampered little princess."

The girl blushed in embarrassment, "Mom!"

"Sorry, hun," Nabiki said, "I'll get him to apologize to you."

Ranma stood as she walked near and folded his arms over his chest, "So what did you learn?"

The woman waggled a finger in front of his face, "Uh, uh, you have an apology to make first."

"What?" Ranma asked before looking at the pouting Hitomi standing next to her mom, "Oh, sorry, I guess I did push it a little to far. Don't be angry Hitomi."

He smiled at the girl and she seemed to soften a little before nodding, "Okay, but don't do it again."

"Okay."

Clearing her throat, Nabiki drew his attention once again, "From what I learned from that card you are apparently who I thought you were. All the evidence points to you being Ranma, there is just one last test I would like to conduct. For this we need to go somewhere private."

Grinning toothily and half joking, Ranma said, "Is this something that Hitomi should see."

Nabiki shrugged, "Well it's nothing sexual if that's what you mean, I believe it would be best if she saw it just so she knew in case it turns up later."

He nodded, "Alright, well let's go then."

With those words the three of them walked back towards Nabiki's house. Most of the walk was spent making small talk, with Nabiki throwing in things from the past that she hopped Ranma would remember. There were a few things that did seem to stick, if only for a second or two, but it was only a second. After a few more tries, Nabiki became quiet and the rest of the walk was made in silence. Finally they got home and the woman told Ranma to take a seat and wait. Ranma complied with a nod and took a seat on the sofa in front of the television.

Nabiki disappeared into the kitchen for a while and there was the sound of running water. When the woman came back she had two glasses in her hands. One was steaming and the other was normal cold tap water. She set the steaming one down in front of Ranma and slowly poured the other glass over a surprised

Ranma's head. The result was a very pissed off red haired, and now female,

Ranma.

"What'd you do that for?" the red haired woman yelled, "and why does my voice sound different?"

Calmly, Nabiki guided the girl over to a mirror so she could take a look, "This is why you're voice sounds different."

Ranma took one look and screamed, stumbling backwards and falling to the floor, "What the hell happened?"

"Wow, that is some deep amnesia," Nabiki said in astonishment, "you mean to say that even the curse that has been the bane of your existence brings back no memories?"

The red haired woman climbed to her feet and blinked, "You mean I've been like this since I was eighteen."

"Try fifteen, Ranma." Nabiki said, "You had it when you first met me and that was when you just turned sixteen. You had it a year before that."

Ranma held her head as she shook it slowly back and forth, "Man, this is too much to deal with right now. I need to go for a walk, I need to think."

With those words the man walked out the door, closing it lightly behind him, and started in a random direction down the street. There was so much that he was forced to come to terms with right now, not the least of which was the fact that he had a curse that changed his gender. Speaking of which, she realized that she had been too angry to have the mind to change back into a male. Now all she had to do was remember what Nabiki said changed her back into a male. It was something like hot water, that had to be it, that must have been the reason for the steaming glass of water. She had just stormed out before Nabiki had a chance to use that water on her. Now she just had to find someone who was willing to part with some hot water. Might as well try a random door.

Going up to one of the next closest doors, she knocked and waited for an answer. There was a few seconds of waiting and she knocked again, making sure that if there was someone inside they heard her knock. There were a few seconds of pause before heavy footsteps sounded on the other side of the door. The door opened and there was an old lady in the entryway giving him a suspicious eye.

"Excuse me, ma'am," Ranma said while trying to sound as polite as possible, "I was just wondering if you would have some warm water I could borrow."

The old lady looked her up and down for a second before closing the door. Ranma sighed and looked at the door for a second before starting to turn away. She made it to the end of the walkway before he heard the door open again. Looking back he saw the old lady standing in the doorway with a steaming kettle of water in her hands. Ranma walked back to her and took the steaming kettle, bowing in thanks as he did so.

"Thank you much, ma'am," she said.

The old lady smiled, "No problem, if you have time you should go visit the Tendo Dojo you left so long ago. They have missed you a lot, Ranma Saotome."

The girl gasped in surprise as she poured the hot water over herself, the old woman's words surprising him, "Thanks, could you tell me where it is? I don't have the best memory after all this time."

"Sure, it's very easy to get there from here, just go strait down the street," the woman said.

Ranma bowed again, "Thank you, and take care."

"You're welcome young man, and watch out for people cleaning their driveways with ladles," the old woman said with a smile.

Smiling, Ranma nodded as he walked away, "I will."

The old lady had been right when she had said that the house was just a little down the street from her. Even if he did have his full memories, he was not sure he would remember the place. Not that it was not important looking, just the opposite actually, it was just that he could tell the house had been consumed by age. The giant wooden gates hung open, crawling with vines and rot. The lawn was covered in weeds that grew over a foot high. The house itself looked to be condemned and the dojo in the yard was missing a few walls. Though he was sure that this place once held a life for him, the promise of getting that back was as impossible as the house ever looking like it used to.

Walking through the yard he spotted something in the grass, something that did not seem to belong. Bending down, Ranma picked the object up and studied it for a few minutes. It looked like the remnants of a camera, most of the body was missing though, along with the case. Ranma studied the object and saw that the broken camera has been cut by something sharp, the severing too strait and smooth for a simple breaking. Something had happened at this house, a fight of some sort had driven these people out. Maybe exploring the house a little more would reveal something more about what had happened here.

Standing, Ranma headed towards the house and opened the door with a creak like a falling oak. Carefully he stepped in and beheld a view that looked like something out of a horror movie. Cobwebs covered everything and furniture was covered with sheets as if it was about to be moved. He walked around the first floor a little more but he could find nothing to help him find out who he was.

Ranma decided that looking upstairs might be a better bet.

As he made his way up the stairs they creaked in a foreboding symphony. He felt as if he would fall through the stairs with every new step he took. It was a few minutes before he got to the top of the stairs and made his way down the hall to look at the rooms. One door had a wooden duck with the words "Akane" on it. Deciding to start there he opened the door and took a look inside. Most of the room was bare, except for a bed and a single picture left standing. Walking over to the picture he blew the dust off and took a look at the picture.

It in there was a picture of him next to six other women looking nervous. The faces of the girls in the picture around him looked to range from happy to mad, even to neutral. He recognized one of the girls as Nabiki and the others vaguely drew something out of the back of his mind. Still he could barely hold on to the feeling, it almost seemed like a memory but he could not really say for sure. This picture proved what he had been suspecting when he had entered this place.

This was Nabiki's old house, which meant that something had happened after he left to make this place like this. Maybe something like a fire, or it could be something as major as a fight that had taken this house. Either way the fact was that something had happened that he had not been there to prevent. The fire part seemed pretty illogical just because of the fact that the house did not show signs of burning in any places.

Studying the picture, it looked like he was somehow unhappy with what the picture showed. He put it back down as he had found it and turned to walk out of the room to investigate the house further. Most of the things he found were inconsequential to what he was trying to figure out. Figuring he probably could not find anything else to give him clues Ranma decided to make his way back to

Nabiki's house. It was getting late and he was sure she would start to wonder if he was okay. It was on his way out that he saw a man in a backpack standing in the broken down gate of the house looking as if he had just seen a ghost.

Wondering what the look was about, Ranma walked over to the man and cocked his head to the side, "What's with the look, buddy?"

The man blinked and without warning threw a punch at Ranma, who casually leaned to the side to avoid it, "So it's true."

"I don't know what you're babbling about, but throwing a punch at someone you don't know is not a good start to a relationship," Ranma said with an awkward look on his face.

"First off, I'm not exactly trying to ask you out, Ranma, and second I do know you," The man raised an eyebrow, "though you don't remember me apparently."

Ranma shrugged, "Should I know you? You don't seem too important. Pretty average looking in fact."

The man grinned, "Well it seems that you never change, you forgot me the last time I found you at school, eleven years ago. I shouldn't really blame you, it has been quite some time since you last saw me."

"Well then you will forgive me if I'm on my way," Ranma said as he tried to brush by the other man.

"No, I won't, I never did have a good track record with my temper," The man said as he reached out and grabbed Ranma's shoulder.

With a sudden narrowing of the eyes, the man with the braided ponytail narrowed his eyes and in a flash grabbed the other man by the hand. There was a sickening lurch and then the man found that he was lifted into the air. Thinking quickly, he twisted his body in the air and landed easily on his feet before he hit the ground hard. The surprise was evident on Ranma's face as he witnessed his opponent pull this off. The man he faced just smiled as he saw the look on the face of his rival.

"Don't think I'm some amateur you can just throw around, Ranma," The man grinned, "You must have gotten soft in your old age."

Ranma frowned and before his opponent could react he lunged forward and elbowed the man in the throat. While the man stumbled back, Ranma pressed his advantage by grabbing the man's head and letting it say hello to his knee. His opponent recoiled and stumbled back to get his bearings before he grinned at Ranma with an almost feral look. Confused, the pigtailed man blinked and stood strait before turning his back.

"Hey, don't turn you're back on me," the man screamed at Ranma's back.

Ranma turned and smiled lightly at him, "You are good, I'll admit that, but you are not good enough. You lack the ability to take it to the level that you must to defeat me. To defeat me you much kill and that… is the one thing you can't do."

"You may be right," The man said as he stood strait also, "I was not wanting to fight to the death. I was hoping that you would remember me… I talked to Nabiki, Ranma…"

The man sighed and looked as if he was irritated by that news, "That woman is insufferable. She sticks her nose where it doesn't belong."

"She cares about you," the man said, "When you disappeared she tried to find out where you went. At first we thought it was just for her sister, Akane, my wife."

Ranma turned to him sharply, "This makes me mad, and I have no idea who you are or who your wife is to me but for some reason those words make me angry."

"I'm Ryouga Hibiki," the said in a flat tone, "my wife is Akane Tendo, you used to be engaged to her."

"Ryouga, huh?" Ranma looked up to the sky as if searching for an answer from a higher power, "And the questions keep piling. Of course whether it would be up or across is the question I want to know."

Ryouga walked up to him, picking up his backpack as he did so, and placed a hand on his shoulder in a friendly gesture, "Nobody knows what happened to you, not even Nabiki found out and she has connections to that kind of information."

Ranma looked back at the picture that he had saw earlier, he had not realized that he was in the same room as before. Everyone looked happy except for him, and for all intensive purposes nothing had changed. He could have left to find happiness, maybe he was forced to, and maybe he should try to find a way to get his memory back. Something occurred to him and he looked at Ryouga with eyes that held no room for his question to be unanswered.

"You said that Nabiki cared for me, what did you mean?" Ranma asked the question harshly.

Ryouga's green eyes met his blue eyes and there was a long pause before he answered, "It's not my place to say, suffice it to say, she did not want you to marry her sister."

With that the man walked away and as he did, Ranma was left with even more questions that before and no answers. Sighing, he turned and walked out of the room and eventually out of the ruins of the house. It had gotten so late that the night breeze was out and a light wind blew through the streets. It was warm this night and Ranma enjoyed the feeling of it, the wind on his face and his close fluttering. Everything was dark except for where the street lights shone down in a distorted circle of brightness. Stopping at a vending machine he put in some money he had found digging in his pocket. There was a click and some beeping as he made his selection then a wiring sound as the machine released his selection from its grasp. Ranma reached down and took the package from the machine, it was a pack of cigarettes. The man went to put one in his mouth before he realized that he did not have a lighter. With a silent curse he put the package in his back pocket to save for later.

It took him a while before he actually got back to the house, not because it was far away, but because it was hard for him to find. He had not been around this area a lot and so he had found the place difficult to locate. Eventually he did get back to the house and he found the front door unlocked and a meal waiting for him when he got back. Really it was just an instant meal but he expected no different from her, she did not seem to be living the "charmed life" so to speak. Truth to tell, he was not really hungry and so decided to eat it later.

It had been sitting out this long so it probably wouldn't hurt it to stay out a little longer. Making his way to the couch, Ranma was surprised to see someone already occupying the place in which he intended to sleep. It was a little cliché on her part but he felt the need to see it through so he picked her up and gently did his duty by putting the woman in her proper bed before retiring himself. As he walked out he could swear he heard a snicker come from somewhere but dismissed it as his imagination. Had he known that Nabiki was actually awake as he took her to be he would have been a little angry. As he was he decided to just go to bed, or to his couch as the case may be.

Laying down he thought about the ways in which he would be able to get his memory back. It may have helped had he been able to figure out how it happened in the first place. With a sigh he went to sleep and decided to figure it out in the morning. After all he was tired and in this state of mind he would barely be able to figure out how to open a box, let alone figure out the mysteries of his life.

It was the television that woke him, someone had been watching it for a while he supposed. As he opened his eyes and looked at the entertainment device which worked by way of a vacuum tube, he could see a news reporter. She was standing in front of what probably used to be a warehouse but it was so wrecked he could barely tell that it had been a building. Sitting up he listened idly as she talked about someone possibly planting a bomb and blowing the warehouse up. He sniffed his arms as he listened and found that he really needed to wash up before his smell knocked out a yak. Getting up he found Hitomi staring intently at the television in a chair next to the couch he was laying on. Blinking, he decided it did not really matter and decided to go ahead and take a shower. Walking upstairs he knocked on the door to the bathroom and getting no answer he opened the door and proceeded to undress and bathe.

As he turned on the shower and waited for the water to warm up he thought about the warehouse on the news. Something in the back of his mind told him that he was going to have to go there to find out his identity. The question to why this came to him did occur to him and that was a question he dismissed because he could not answer it. Getting out of the shower he dried himself off and wrapped a towel around his waist. As he walked to where he had laid his close he was surprised to see them gone and in their place were a different set, a red shirt with yellow shirt ties and a pair of black pants. There was also a pair of black Chinese peasant shoes provided for him, he did not put them on because he had no need of shoes while he was inside. Instead he picked them up and carried them downstairs to the door.

As he turned around he saw Nabiki standing in front of him with her arms crossed, "Hey, I'm glad you came back."

Ranma raised an eyebrow and grinned, "I couldn't let you worry about me. After all, with my charming good looks I'm sure you would miss me."

Nabiki gave him a mock frown, "Ah yes, even if you lost your memory you still act the same. So, did you find anything?"

The man shook his head, "Nah, the only thing I found was a picture of a bunch of people that I guess used to know me. I went to your old house."

The woman seemed to become sad at this, "So you saw what happened then, after you left, one of your fiancés, Shampoo, attacked us."

"Wait, ONE, of my fiancés?"

"You had three and one that was crazy as a bat and thought you two were married. Anyways," Nabiki started to look uncomfortable, "She attacked the whole family in a rage and threatened to kill everyone. If it weren't for Ryouga being there a lot of people would have gotten hurt. Still, she was skilled enough to give him a good run and in the end her great-grandmother had to subdue her, having arrived just a little too late to save your father from being killed. To his credit he did try to protect us, he wasn't that bad in the end."

Ranma sighed, "Yes, well, that explains the house, but why did you not rebuild it. The damage did not look that bad."

At these words the woman seemed to become furious and marched up to him, "I'll tell you why, you idiot, it's because you felt it was okay to just take off and leave everyone behind. We thought you would come back at first, for a year we were convinced that you would come back. When a year past everyone started to think you had really gone, and seeing as you had become one of the family it was devastating to us. We had to leave because if we didn't there would be the constant reminder of someone missing from our lives, someone important. Damn it, Ranma, you fool."

The man was taken back as the woman collapsed against him and started to sob. This was definitely not the same woman he had known before, so calm and collected, this woman was different. It seemed as if the guard she used to protect herself from life had totally slipped away and in its place a very hurt woman was left. Of course, Ranma was never one to just let a girl cry, it always tugged at him when they did. For all his machismo and bravado he was really a softy and that was what all the girls liked about him. It was not his good looks, though those helped, it was the fact that underneath it all he was a nice guy. The only problem was that he had changed from before, he was not the Ranma that this woman knew. He had been through many things and it was hard for him to put into words what he could say. There was a point where he would stumble clumsily around his words to figure out the right thing to say. Now he quietly tried to figure out the right thing to say.

"I'm sorry," the man said as he put his arms around the woman gently, it seemed the right thing to do, "I think that I had to go, I wish I could remember why, I can't remember anything, Nabiki. It scares me, I don't think I've been this scared of anything. You got to realize that I don't even remember you... I wish I could say something comforting but I don't know what would comfort you. I guess saying I'm sorry is not enough."

The woman just continued to sob in his chest, he supposed that it was good to just let out the emotions. She had probably been holding them in for a while and he knew that holding your feelings back for a long time was not healthy. It was about a half an hour later that she stopped and freed herself from his embrace, wiping her eyes as she did so.

"You feel a little better," the man asked.

Nabiki nodded and looked down at the ground, "You know, you are the only one who's made me break down like that. Well except for my mother when she passed away, damn you, why'd you have to leave."

Ranma shrugged, "I wish I knew, go off to work, you're late. I'm going to look for more clues but I promise that I'll be back in time for dinner."

"You had better," the woman said, walking out the door, "Oh, and make sure

Hitomi gets to school without a problem, okay?"

Ranma agreed to this and then he realized that said little girl was going to be late if he did not get going, "Come on, Hitomi, it's time for school."

"Alright," the girl said as she picked up her things and the two of them headed out the door.

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That's all you get for Chapter One, a measly 12 pages. I'm being sarcastic in case you could not tell. Anyways, I hope you like this first chapter. It is a little different from the show, I realize that. Basically the idea just came into my head one night when I was tired and grew from there... I'll try to figure out where all this is going after the next chapter.


	2. 2nd Book of Amnesia

Ranma 1/2

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I own none of these characters, just the story that I have put them into. For a more in depth rant try reading my other story, For Future Times. It may or may not be posted by now.

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Remembrance

Chapter 2

It was just as he remembered it, if he was able too do so, the scars of destruction that he had once wrought on the building were still there. These scars were the result of people fighting for an ideal most called love, but one he called trouble. Or he supposed he would have before he lost his memory. Now he was not even sure why he grew sentimental at the sight of such an ordinary edifice of learning. Nothing was really spectacular about this school, it was the same shape as normal schools of the area. It was the same white color, it was blocky and unimportant looking, and its name was Furinkan High School. It had a clock.

This clock was about one minute away from chiming when the part of Ranma's mind that warned him of danger seconds before it happened signaled that it would be a good idea to be on the lookout for trouble. The signal in his mind was assaulting him like a klaxon warning of an impending nuclear meltdown a reactor plant. Something big was about to strike this place and he knew that a lot of people would die if he did not figure out what it was. There were kids going on about their business on the school grounds and some where hurrying to class. He scanned the area in saw a shadow disappear into the trees.

"Hitomi," Ranma looked at the girl seriously, "I want you to keep anyone from entering the gate, something big is about to happen."

The girl was obviously confused but nodded anyway, who was she to argue with this man, "Alright."

Ranma smiled and patted her on the head lightly to reassure her that everything would be all right. Running around the building, Ranma quickly tried to find the man but there was no sign of him. He would have to be careful from here on out, one wrong move could cause whatever it was that was going to happen to happen early. Then he heard a rustling of bushes and it connected that with the wind was not strong enough to cause the movement of said object. Running towards the sound, he found a man running in the opposite direction from the school and without hesitation he jumped forward, landing in front of the man, and grabbed him by the front of his shirt.

"What did you do?" Ranma wanted to know and he left no room for error in his voice.

The man laughed and pointed at the watch around his wrist, "I planted a bomb in the school, and it's remotely detonated by this watch when the countdown ends. It was meant to catch you but I guess you will have to live with the memory of all those innocents. Stop it if you can, it is on the roof. You have two minutes.

Cursing, Ranma decided he would keep this man alive, he might know something. Pressing a pressure point quickly, he ran back towards the school and without hesitation he ran into the building as fast as he could. As he ran he yelled for everyone to get out. He screamed that the school was going to explode and they would die if they did not get out. He was running so fast that his momentum carried him onto the walls and out of the way of the fleeing people as he ran towards the bombs. It had taken him a minute and he was only half way there. He put everything he had into making himself run faster than he had ever run before. He had thirty seconds when he finally reached the top of the building and found the bomb laying in the corner. The controls were simple, which was strange, just an on and off button. He studied it for a few seconds to make sure there was no failsafe and then pushed the off button and sighed. Standing up he was about to walk back down the stairs when he heard a beeping sound and he looked at the bomb to see a message. It mocked him, it told him that he was stupid to think that there would be only one bomb. At least that was what was translated in his mind by the continuing countdown. He had five seconds to get of there before the second bomb went off. He spotted it at the other corner of the room. It was too far away.

Then he noticed one of the kids standing and staring at him, her eyes were sharp and accusing. She seemed oblivious of the danger, she just stared at him, and of course she would not know what was going on. He had very little time and he did the only thing he could think of, he ran towards the girl and grabbed her right before the bomb went off and he jumped from the roof of the school. He had never jumped from this far up but he was sure that he could handle it… right.

The wind blew by him as he held the girl in his arms and witnessed the ground getting closer. The fall was longer than he expected and he tried to work out whether or not he would be able to handle it. After careful consideration he determined that he could, though it would hurt a bit. Then the ground approached and he landed heavily in a crouch on his feet. He knew what came next, debris fell around him and the shielded the girl with his body as rock the size of his head and larger rained down like death, or at least very intense pain, around them. The rocks hit him but he did not let the girl go until he was sure that the danger had passed. Finally he stood and let her go, he followed her out of the gate as pain assaulted him a various parts of his body.

Had he been able to see his back he would have seen that his shirt was torn and there was a gash there that freely let his blood flow. He walked out of the school gates and looked back at the ruined school with certain regret. Then he remembered the man he left unconscious in the bushes and ran back to the spot he left him to find that he was already dead. Someone had found the man's body and shot him once in the chest and once in the forehead, so much for trying to find out information from the man. Ranma walked back to the front gate where everyone had crowded and found Hitomi looking at him strangely, almost worriedly. He walked up to her and smiled reassuringly.

"I'm fine," Ranma said easily, "and so is everyone else."

The girl looked up at him, her face not changing, "Your back is all bloody."

The man blinked and took off his shirt and saw that there was a big cut and a bloody spot on the back. He reached his hand around and inspected, feeling something warm and wet he brought his hand back around and found that it was covered in blood. While he was doing this he failed to notice that some of the female police officers that had arrived on the scene where freely ogling him.

They ran their eyes over his chiseled form and came to rest of his dark blue eyes and his gentle face. One of them walked up and asked if she could take care of the wound on his back, to which he replied that he could take care of it himself. More women gathered around and started to hound him, causing him to get even more irritated with every passing second. Finally he let out a growl and leapt out of the fray and into the road which he was bout to run down when he felt someone grab his arm and handcuffs put on him.

Looking down in annoyance he was about to yell at the person that did this until he found himself standing in front of a woman with short dark hair and brown eyes. He had the feeling that he had seen her before, maybe, damn this whole amnesia thing sucked. He thought he might as well let her cuff him and explain what happened before he involved the police farther than he had to.

"You're coming with me," the woman said, "And don't try anything funny."

Ranma smiled and shrugged, "That's fine but you might want to get this wound on my back taken care of unless you want blood all over your car."

With a frown the woman motioned for one of the doctors, who walked over to her, "Yes, officer Tendo?"

"Bandage this man up quickly, I want to question him," The woman said.

"Yes ma'am," the man said and he walked over to his ambulance and got some gauze and medical tape and quickly wrapped the man's wound.

The woman nodded briefly and said, "It will do for now, I'll get it stitched up later," then she shoved him into the car and took him to the police station.

Ranma lay back in the police car, silent as he was chauffeured to the police station by the woman who drove the car. He really had nothing to say now that would make a difference. He just watched the light cast shadows inside the car as it drove along the road as they made their way to the station. It was weird that he was left with so much time to reflect on what had been happening. Maybe it was that he had no memories to occupy his mind and he was trying to fill the time by thinking about how his life was now. Maybe he should just escape and be on his way, it would not be hard. Or maybe he should just get out of the car and see what this police woman had to ask him. They had arrived at the police station after all.

As the woman opened the door he climbed out and walked into the station, still shirtless, and allowed himself to be sat in an interrogation room. The wound on his back was getting slightly uncomfortable now and he had to move around to try and keep his back from touching the chair too much, which made him slouch. The woman walked in and stood in front of him with her arms crossed.

"So, who are you?" the woman asked pointedly.

Ranma shrugged, "I've been told my name is Ranma Saotome. Though I would be more inclined to tell you that I really don't know."

"You're playing with me," the woman said harshly, "Who are you and why were you able to get to that building before the bomb went off and clear it out? I want you to answer these questions."

"I bet you do," Ranma said easily, "So here you go, I don't know, and I was told by the man I found, the one who is now dead, I did not kill him by the way, in the woods behind the school, that there was one bomb on the roof. He said one, I did not know about the other one."

The woman sighed and shook her head, "You are as stubborn as ever. Tell me if you are Ranma Saotome or not."

Ranma stood suddenly and got in her face, separated by an inch of air, "Look police officer, I answered your question already. I may be him, I may not. Now let me go so I can find out or I'm going to make everyone in your station have a bad day. Do YOU understand?"

"You had better take a step back," the woman said, "I will let you go. However I will be required to escort you. Now let's get going."

Ranma followed the woman out of the room and again he was led to a police car only this time he was allowed to sit in the front seat. It was a bit different from the back, mostly due to the fact that there was no kind of restraint to keep him from attacking the woman. There was no reason to do so now but he needed to know if he would need to do so if the option was needed. He told her that he needed to go to the warehouse that had been bombed a few days ago, so she took him there without a word and as they arrived they found that it had been taped off. Around the barricade was a group of police officers keeping people out. Ranma decided he would let them play their game, he walked right up to one of them and told them he needed to be let through. When the policeman refused he shrugged and walked past the man without hesitation.

"Hey, stop," the man shouted.

The woman who was supposed to be watching him ran up behind him after explaining to the officer that it was okay. Ranma was making his way to the wreckage and had begun to sift through the rubble by the time she had gotten to him. He did not say anything to her but it was clear there was something troubling him as he searched. There was something on his mind, something that seemed inherently dangerous, and she was not sure that bothering him would be wise at the moment.

He turned suddenly and looked at her, "I think that this place is where it happened. The more I stay here the more I get these flashes of memory, unfortunately I have not been able to keep them in my mind."

The woman nodded, "I see, well my name is Akane Tendo, I will let you go for now but be sure to contact me if you do find anything. I have to be going."

Ranma nodded before something flashed through his mind, no, not a flash but an actual memory. A picture of a girl went through his mind, smiling, laughing, angry, all the emotions. The man tried to shake the feeling away but there was no denying that this was an actual memory. It was a big chunk of memory that he had been missing but it still did not tell who he was. It did tell him that he knew the woman named Nabiki and that she was the older sister of Akane, and yet there was one woman missing from the picture. She had long brown hair held back in a single ponytail that usually hung down in front over one of her shoulders, her name was Kasumi.

Ranma looked at the woman as she left and was unable to speak for a while, there was a feeling of deep long in him. He suspected that it was the reason for his jealousness towards the man named Ryouga. He was not able to go any farther than that. He tried hard to get past there but he could only get to the "what" and not the "why". He spent a little more time walking around the site before he realized it was getting late, and also that he should probably get a watch at some point, and he started walking back towards Nabiki's house. On the way there a police car traveling the same way as him flashed its lights and he stopped to see what the officer wanted. That was when he realized that it was the same girl from before, Akane.

Bending at the waist slightly he asked, "Can I help you officer?"

Akane sighed in disgust, "You really don't change, you may not know who you are but I can tell by your actions that you are Ranma. I was wondering where you were going."

Ranma blinked, "Um, this may sound strange, but I'm going back to your sister's house. I told Nabiki I would be home for dinner."

"You did now," Akane said as she looked at the clock on the dash of her police cruiser, "Well you won't make it unless I give you a ride, hop in."

He knew that it was inevitable so he did not argue, "Whatever you say, ma'am."

As he climbed into the car, Akane flipped the siren on and before Ranma could even buckle his restraint he found himself hurling through traffic at speeds in excess of sixty miles an hour. He knew that Nabiki's house was a ways away from the destroyed warehouse but this was ridiculous. The man cringed slightly as they drifted around a corner and came about an inch from an oncoming car before the car was once again taken into the proper lane. They drifted around another corner and the woman flipped the sirens off and slowed down. They were just a block away from her sister's house.

"You said you didn't know who I was," Akane said as they neared the house, "How did you know that Nabiki was my sister."

Ranma composed himself after a second before he cleared his throat and awkwardly replied, "Just after you left something happened, I'm not exactly sure what happened, but I regained part of my memory, at least the part dealing with you and your family. Speaking of which, where is your oldest sister, Kasumi."

Akane sighed, "She wanted to stay with dad, and I think she started a family but she still cooks food for him and her family."

"Always was a homebody," Ranma acknowledged, "So where are you off to after this?"

The car pulled up to the house and stopped, Akane opened her door and said, "I'm going to visit my sister, we have not talked in a while."

Ranma blinked as she got out, he felt his impending doom approaching shortly,

"Uh, you really don't have to," he said with nervousness that the woman did not notice.

"Nonsense," Akane replied.

The man quickly got out of the car and joined her at the doorway as she knocked. He felt like he was being punished, from what he remembered of Akane she was easily angered and would usually take it out on him. With a certain resigned feeling in him he gulped as Nabiki opened the door and smiled as she saw him and then became neutral as she saw her sister.

"Ah, to what do I owe the pleasure of a visit, sister," Nabiki said in her normal sarcastic tone, "Surely this isn't anything to do with dear Ranma."

He really wished she would not do that, mostly because it made Akane angry as Ranma had thought it would. She was rubbing it in her face that she had lost the first man she may have been in love with. At least that was how he viewed it, and he knew that Akane hated to have anything rubbed in her face. This time was different though, Akane did not seem to fall for the loaded jab at her pride. Instead she frowned at her sister and shook her head.

"So you think this is Ranma?" Akane asked, "You may be right, I actually just came here to say hi."

Nabiki folded her arms over her chest and seemed to consider this news, "I see, well considering it has been a long time, I could see why you want to. However, I am far from happy with seeing you after how you acted all those years ago. And it doesn't make me want to like you any more after the way you waited a whole month before you got engaged to Ryouga."

Akane looked a little taken back by this and Ranma looked at her in surprise, "Uh, I could be wrong but this might have been a bad idea," he iterated.

Akane frowned, "Shut up, Ranma. I was hoping you would forgive me, Nabiki. I thought it was just a small thing, getting engaged to Ryouga. I know you were against it but I was young and didn't know any better. I'm sorry, I really am."

The older sister sighed and put a hand to her face as she closed her eyes and shook her head back and forth in exasperation, "Look, I'm tired and hungry, come by later. Maybe I can discuss this better then."

Akane sighed and looked at her sister solemnly, "Nabiki... I really am sorry."

"Just go," was all the woman said, "Now is not the time."

Akane nodded and slowly walked back to her squad car and drove off down the road. Nabiki watched her go and closed the door to face Ranma, who was looking a little confused and out of his element. She looked at him in a way that said that he should wait until after dinner to ask any questions about what had just happened. That being the case, he followed behind her as she made her way to the dining room where Hitomi was waiting for them. She had gotten a little bored with waiting for them and started to pick at her food, which was why she looked guilty as they came into the room and a little of her food was already missing.

Nabiki just shook her head, "It's okay, daughter, and I understand that you were hungry."

Ranma sat down next to the girl and picked up his eating utensils, "Ah, real food. I was afraid all you had was that instant ramen."

"Saotome," He paused and looked at her like a deer in the headlights, it was never good when she used only his last name, "It would be wise of you to not comment on such things again."

"Uh, alright," he said before he continued eating.

If there was one thing that had definitely not changed about him it was the fact that he was still a human vacuum cleaner when in came to food. Though he ate a bit slower than usual it was still in a manner that bypassed most of the chewing and went to swallowing much faster than it should. Nabiki wondered how he had gotten away with this for so long without choking on his food. There had to be some secret to it, but she was sure that Ranma was not even aware that he did it and therefore he could not tell her what that secret was. She had seen him eat normal a very few times but judging by the way he was eating now it was not going to be soon that she saw that again. By the time he finished off his food she was barely halfway through her own.

She had to admit that she was not, in fact, very hungry and it was not long before she decided to wrap the rest of her food up and put it in the fridge for the coming day. Hitomi finished her food before she excused herself and went upstairs to her bed in order to get ready for bed. Ranma smiled at her as she did so and decided he would at least do the dishes, helping around the house was the very least he could do for this small family that was trying to help him find his memory again. It was hard for them to do so in between their jobs but it seemed to be coming along well. Nabiki came up behind him and he turned to ask her a question before he noticed that she was staring wide-eyed at him.

"Huh," he said, "Did I grow a second head?"

Nabiki shook her head, "Ranma, what happened to your back?"

He seemed to remember something and felt a little stupid, "Oh, I kind of rescued this girl from the top of a building as a bomb went off. I lost that shirt you gave me too. Sorry."

"I see," the woman said, "I guess that explains why you came home shirtless, with a bandage wrapped around you, and with a police officer."

"She is your sister, Nabiki," Ranma said seriously, "It's okay for you to call her as such."

The woman looked angered by this, "If you had any idea what she did to this family after you left... I mean she practically told us that we were all idiots and that she was getting married to Ryouga. This was only a month after you left."

Ranma nodded, "I understand but that does not change the fact that she is family. You have to forgive her some time."

Nabiki looked at him harshly, "You have no room to talk, Saotome, the way you just left without a word. It practically crippled daddy even more and then there was your mother. She wanted to hunt you down and drag you back, when we explained that this wouldn't work she turned on us and accused us of driving you out."

Ranma raised an eyebrow, "Uh, I hate to say this, but you kind of did."

This seemed to throw the woman off and she stared at him hollowly, "Ranma..."

"Look, the past is the past," The man said quickly before he continued, "I'm glad that you all at least moved on... Mostly."

The brown haired woman turned away from him, "You sure are good at making people feel bad, Saotome. I think I'll go to bed now."

"Nabiki..." Ranma went to grab her but she shrugged his hand off, "Wait, what did I do? Damn it, why does this always happen to me," he mumbled the last part to himself.

Sighing he walked over to the couch and collapsed in a heap, this had been a day of emotional overload and he just wanted it to end. Closing his eyes he idly hoped that tomorrow turned out better than this day had been. He woke up a bit later as he rolled off the couch with a thud and with a look of irritation, grabbed a pillow and decided the floor would have to be good enough.

He woke to the sound of pattering drops of rain on the roof and the pain of sleeping on a hard floor all night. Sitting up with a grunt he slowly got to his feet and walked to the kitchen to find breakfast laying out on the table. There was a note that said that Nabiki had been early enough to take Hitomi to school so he had the day to himself. Ranma wondered idly where it was that Nabiki actually worked, from the way she described it, it was a stuffy office building.

If there was a card or address laying around he could go visit her at work and maybe try and do something to make up with her. He had to admit that he had been a little too blunt last night. Unfortunately he could find nothing to indicate where she worked.

Shrugging he slipped on a t-shirt, walked outside and decided that he would take a walk and try to familiarize himself with the place he lived. It would not be good to have someone attack him and trap him in a dead end. He walked along and made a mental map of the alleys and back streets he might be able to take if worse came to worse. It was about noon by the time he finished and he was getting hungry so he walked into a restaurant to get something to eat. A bell sounded and female voice came from the back of the restaurant that told him he would be served in a minute. Ranma looked at the décor and was surprised that the scenery of the place seemed to come with a flash of memory. He had a feeling something awkward was about to happen and he was going to be the center of it.

The owner of the voice and the restaurant, evidently, made her presence known by the fact that once she spotted him she dropped the plates she was carrying. He turned towards the noise and saw a woman with long brown hair held back by a white ribbon and carrying a huge spatula on her back. She wore a chef outfit with a bandolier of smaller spatulas. She had brown eyes and she was a little shorter than he was with a cute face and a slender figure. She was actually a little shorter than Nabiki, who was no slouch in the figure department herself.

"Ran-chan," The woman said in a surprised voice, "What are you doing here?"

"What did you call me?" The man said in astonishment, "You must be mistaking me for someone else."

The woman looked at him oddly, "No, you're the only one I know that would wear clothes like that and have their hair in that style. Then there is your eyes and the build of your body... what?"

Ranma had been staring at her and when he realized what he had been doing he sighed and shook his head a bit, "No, it's nothing, just that you are a very strange person."

"... What?"

"Well, it's just that, you know," Ranma seemed to stumble over his own words as he looked hesitantly at the giant spatula the woman's grip had moved and tightened around, "It's not like I know you or anything... do I? Damn this amnesia!"

The woman shook her head while holding a hand to her forehead and closing her eyes, "Only you, Ran-chan, only you," the woman muttered.

"Would you please tell me what this is about, stop acting like a weirdo and tell me what you're talking about," The man yelled as he began to get impatient.

"My name is Ukyo Kuonji," the girl said, "I've known you since childhood."

Ranma sighed and shrugged, "And I have no idea if you're telling the truth. You may be a friend, I really can't remember. I need something to eat if it's not too much trouble."

"One special coming up," the woman said.

Sighing, Ranma watched the woman work over the girl and felt rather bad about treating her as he was. It was not as if he could help his actions, he just had to make sure she was not trying to take advantage of his situation. He had no idea how many people knew about his condition or if those people that did were dangerous in any way. The cold distantness of his words was just his means of keeping people away from him that he was not sure he could trust. Which brought up the subject of Nabiki, he trusted her but there was no reason for the trust that he could make out. He just felt comfortable around her and she seemed to feel the same way around him. It was like that from the beginning, there was no coldness in his voice when they first met. He trusted her, and not this woman who was cooking his food. It could be something in his subconscious that caused this reaction, something from long ago that he had lost completely.

"Here you are," the woman said as her words broke him out of his thoughts.

Looking at the food in front of him, he smiled. Okonomiyaki, it meant "as you like it" and was commonly called Japanese pizza even though it really had nothing to do with our view of such a food except that it was flat. The main reason it earned its name was the fact that you could have raw fish on it if you were so inclined. The special was something that Ranma was guaranteed to like because it was what he commonly ordered at places like this. It was different every time but every time he had order the special it had been good. At least that was what the memories that flooded his brain told him as he took his first bite of the food. He staggered a bit and blinked as the flash of memories died down. He still remembered them but not in the same chaotic flow that he had experienced at first.

"Weird, I remember your food better than you," the man said as he finished chewing and looked up at her.

Ukyo nodded, "Definitely the same Ran-chan I used to know."

The man laughed slightly and grinned, "Don't take it the wrong way. You should be lucky that I remember that much," he stopped and looked a little sad suddenly, "I visited the old place I used to live and found it in shambles. How long have I been gone and what happened since then?"

"The most I can tell you is that it was attacked after you left, I was too late to be of any real hope so I used some of the money I made from the restaurant to help them move," Ukyo looked at him resignedly, "After all that happened they really had no choice. The Dojo was beyond repair."

Ranma sighed and frowned, "I see, well, I'm done. Here's the money for the food. Be seeing you, Ukyo."

The woman smiled and nodded, "Alright, and just call me U-chan, for old time sake."

"For old time sake, U-chan," Ranma said with a grin, "See ya."

When the man exited the restaurant he realized that the day had turned slightly cold and it was slightly darker. He had not realized that he had spent so much time in the restaurant just talking to that woman. It was time to head back home and he was sure if he were late that Nabiki would have a fit. It really was irritating having his memory taken from him. It was a pain to people other than himself, he was not oblivious to that big fact. Everyone he met seemed to recognize him and yet he had no feeling of recognition towards anyone. It was like being a stranger in your own home, your mother said hello and the most you could manage was an awkward look of confusion.

"Ranma," he turned to see someone behind him, half cloaked in shadow, "You should use more caution when staging your own death."

The man blinked, "Huh?"

"You want to play dumb with me?" It was a man's voice, cool and level, "Blowing up the factory may have been a way to cover your tracks but walking around in broad daylight just days afterwards is not all that smart."

Ranma let out a sound of irritation, "Buddy, I have enough problems, I don't need to be hassled by some third rate samurai wannabe trying to accuse me of something I have no idea about. I'll say this once, I have amnesia. I don't remember a thing about my life other than I woke up in a hospital."

"You think me stupid," the man drew a sword that was hanging at his side and held it aloft.

"I have to get home, you wouldn't by chance allow me to just take a rain check?" Ranma grinned hopefully.

"I'm not in the mood for games," the man replied.

Ranma shrugged, "I thought not."

The swordsman looked intently at his opponent as the two of them squared off against one another. Ranma did not seem to take any kind of stance but instead yawned and placed his hands behind his back. The swordsman was not fooled by this tactic, it was used to throw a person off balance and make getting the upper hand easy. It left a person totally open, this much was true, but if the person was able to dodge every blow that mattered little. It galled the man with the sword that his opponent would use such a base technique on him. Ranma did not even know how skilled the swordsman was and yet he acted as if this was of no consequence. As long as he stayed calm this technique was useless, he would not let such a technique throw off his concentration.

"I would advise you to drop this," Ranma said suddenly, "you are still young."

"I'm not much younger than you," The man rushed forward suddenly.

The sword passed inches from Ranma's face as he leaned back slightly to avoid the downward slice. Another slice followed this up horizontally at about mid-level and Ranma leaned back at a ninety degree angle so the blade passed harmlessly above him. This left him wide open, or it would have if he were a common amateur. Being used to being in these situations, or at least he thought he was probably used to them, he used the position to rock back onto his hands and do a handspring into the air. The swordsman followed him and made to slash at him as he landed, only to find that he was not there. Instead, Ranma had used a nearby tree to change his path and was now squatting on top of the swordsman's head.

"I hope you learned a lesson," The man said.

The swordsman sneered and tried to adjust his grip to stab at the man on top of his head, "Die!"

Ranma's eyes went wide and he bounced off the man's head to land safely in front of him. Running forward, he aimed at a point just past where the man was standing, giving the illusion that he had misjudged an attack. With a smile the swordsman swung in the martial artist's direction thinking that he had won. Only to feel pain in his stomach as Ranma's knee made contact, followed by an elbow to the back and before he could recover from that, the man was swept of his feet and left laying dazed on his back. To his credit he was good enough to know not to let go of his sword during any point of this.

"That was probably not too fun for you," Ranma said as he stood above the swordsman, "You are good, however you need to practice. Just so you know, I wasn't trying. Here."

The swordsman looked up at the hand that his opponent offered with confusion, "What?"

Ranma sighed, "Look, I'm not going to hold a grudge against some misguided soldier that was doing as he was told. Take my hand, then go back and tell whoever you work for what happened. And make sure you tell them that I have amnesia."

The swordsman took the hand and frowned, "I was told you were good, I have to admit that I underestimated you."

"A common mistake of the prideful," Ranma exclaimed as he stuffed his hands in his pockets as he walked off, "I've made it more than a few times. Just try to get better and I'm sure you'll be more than good enough to fight me soon. Then again, I am the best so probably not."

The swordsman frowned at the departing man and as Ranma walked out of site he grinned slightly and shook his head, "I think that was a compliment. Obviously he's not so good at giving them."

Ranma was feeling good about himself until he realized that the weather had took a drastic change and he had wasted more time playing around with the sword guy than he had meant to. The female version of the cocky martial artist looked up in irritation at the dark sky. If there was one thing he had definitely not forgotten, it was that he got supremely irritated when it rained or when he was splashed with cold water. Not only had he spent too much time with that man but also he was now a female and on top of it all he was late for dinner. This did not bode well for him, not in the least.

It took about an hour before a soaking wet female with red hair entered the house. It was a little past dinner time and when she closed the door she found a brown haired woman looking at her with arms folded across her chest in irritation. Ranma smiled in that way that means you know you're in trouble and you do not know what is going to happen. The present application of this meant that Ranma knew she was a dead woman if she did anything wrong.

"Uh..."

Nabiki frowned, "I've been worried about you, hoping you would at least get back in time for dinner, thinking the worst, and all you have to say is 'uh'?"

"Well I hit a little snag on the way back," Ranma said as she tried to summon a little courage, "this guy tried to attack me. He was good, I figured I play with him a little before I defeated him. It's not my fault."

"Uh huh," Nabiki did not sound convinced, "So you stop to play around with this guy, I'm sure there's more to this, like the fact that you stopped by Ukyo's.

Not to mention that you only threw on a t-shirt and seeing that it's soaked through, it's not doing the best job of hiding your chest."

Ranma blinked, "How did you know about Ukyo, and what's the big deal about my chest?"

"I knew about Ukyo because I stop there on my way home from work from time to time, and that happened to be today," Nabiki walked up to Ranma and frowned at her, "And the big deal about your chest is that you're a female, your practically advertising that fact with the way your shirt is sticking to your tits!"

Ranma was surprised not by the fact that the shirt she was wearing was doing a good impression of being in a wet shirt contest, but by the fact that Nabiki had used such a blatantly word. It seemed a little out of character, she looked at the brown haired woman and rethought that. Maybe it was more in character for her than Ranma had originally thought.

"Okay, your angry," The redhead said in a strait forward voice, "I can understand the first two, but what's wrong with the wet shirt."

Nabiki sighed in frustration, "You are hopeless, and you have not changed in the least. I would have hoped you would learn some feminine modesty by now."

"I'm not a female," Ranma pointed out, "Well most of the time anyways."

The woman threw her hands up and turned to walk away from him, "You're hopeless!"

Ranma thought on this for a second, "I may be."

There was a long moment of silence before Ranma silently moved to get some hot water before sitting down at the table in the dinning room and sat down. The food was probably cold by now, in fact it was an undeniable fact that he could tell just by looking at it. That did not matter, he was hungry enough that even cold food was good enough to eat. He dumped the hot water over himself. The strange thing was that the food was okonomiyaki, that could have been why Nabiki had been irritated at him. She had stopped by there earlier and picked him up what used to be his favorite food. Being that he already ate it, she had assumed that he would not want the food that she had bought.

"Nabiki," Ranma said as he paused after swallowing some food, "I'm sorry."

She looked at Ranma in surprise from across the room where she had been about to make her way upstairs. The woman had assumed that the fight they had was his way of saying that he did not want to talk to her. That was the farthest thing from the truth really, he had known that Nabiki would be angry and had accepted that.

It was not that he did not want to talk to the woman, it was that he had thought that she did not want to talk to him.

"Yeah," Nabiki said neutrally, her voice calm, "You had better be."

He shook His head, "Now I know I'm in trouble, you only use that voice on people you're looking to take advantage of. Either that or you're trying to calculate what my intentions are."

The woman let a moment of surprise flash across her face, "You're not as dumb as I thought."

"Is this because of what I said last night?" Ranma asked suddenly, "Because if it is I... well... what can I really say?"

Nabiki looked at him before she turned around and walked upstairs, not any faster than normal, but there was an air of heaviness about her steps. Ranma grit his teeth and let his head hit the table in frustration, why could he not think of something to say. It was not as if he did not know the words, it was that all the words that came to mind were corny and self-righteous. He cursed himself for this being the time that he failed to say something, even if it was the wrong thing he needed to say something to stop her from getting irritated and walking off. He did not want to lose this battle, he would not lose this battle.

"It's not about last night, not totally," Nabiki glared at him, "it's about everything you have done to me and my family. My sister loved, you were like the son my daddy never had, and you were practically Kasumi's little brother. And you have the nerve to just leave."

Something itched at the back of Ranma's brain, "Okay, then what about you?"

"What do you mean by that?" Nabiki frowned at him.

"I mean, what was I to you," Ranma was serious, "Was I a wallet, a thing that produced money or was there something else, because if there was you have hid it damn well."

"Are you two fighting?" A small voice suddenly asked from the side, "I don't like when people fight."

The two adults turned to see a small girl standing in her pajamas and holding a stuffed teddy bear, her hair was messed and she had a scared look on her face that neither of the adults had seen before. Ranma looked like he wanted to disappear from the house right there and then and Nabiki was horrified. The both struggled with their own feeling and the atmosphere of the room as the argument came to a sudden halt.

"Hitomi," Ranma said lightly, "when did you get up, I thought you were asleep."

The little girl blinked and looked unsure of what to say, shyly she replied, "You woke me up, you are so loud."

Ranma did not think he was being loud but nonetheless felt compelled to apologize, "I'm sorry, Hitomi, I'll be on my way."

"Where are you going," The little girl asked.

The man smiled and gave her a thumb up, "Somewhere safe," in his mind he was thinking, somewhere I will not cause a problem.

"You're leaving again," Nabiki said quietly.

Ranma turned and nodded, "You can't say I didn't say goodbye this time."

With those words he turned and walked out the door and into the cool of the night. It was not completely dark as streetlights lit the night and the stars and moon were bright in the sky. The man looked up at the night sky and somehow felt the power to smile at the sight. It was not a content smile but rather a lonely smile, one that knew its owner was not really happy.

"I guess I had better get going, before I cause too much pain," Ranma said to nobody in particular as he started walking.

He found his progress halted suddenly by two slender arms engulfing his waist from behind him. Looking down in surprise at the hands he wondered why he had not sensed an attack, after a while he realized that whoever it was that had taken hold of him was not actually trying to attack. He was not sure what he should do so he just stood there and waited for the other person to make the next move. That was when he felt the person lean into his back and whisper something barely audible.

"You were not just a wallet to me," The voice was so soft he thought it was the wind at first.

"Huh?"

Turning he saw Nabiki standing across from him and holding back her tears, "I said you were more than just someone I took money from, you were one of the few people I could count on. It started as just friendship, but somehow it turned into something more, without me wanting it to. I tried to suppress it because I knew my sister was in love with you."

Ranma did not know what to say, this woman had always been an ice queen to him, she never showed emotion towards him, "I... Nabiki, what are you doing?"

"I'm trying to get you to stay," she was almost yelling at him now, "Because if you left me now I could not take it. I did take you for granted when we were young and I swore that I would never let it happen again. For months I thought you would come back. But you didn't. Now you're back again and I find myself falling into old habits, thinking that you will be there no matter what I do."

Ranma chuckled, "I never cease to be surprised by you, Miss Tendo."

"What are you saying?" The look of betrayal was clear in her eyes, "Why are you so formal?"

The man loosed himself from her grip and sighed, "You're wrong, you did not fall into old habits. This is entirely new and so out of character for you, the Nabiki Tendo I know is strong and tenacious. She is not a weak little girl that breaks at the thought of someone leaving. You are not the same girl I knew."

The woman looked struck before she wiped her eyes and stared at him with anger this time, "What are you talking about, how many times do you expect me to lose someone I care about before I break down? If it wasn't for the fact that I love you I would destroy you right now!"

The man let out a laugh and shook his head, "I see, so the real you is not completely gone. And it seems the real me has yet to fade also, you're very scary when you want to be."

With those words he grabbed her with both arms and looked in her eyes, and the need for any words disappeared as he leaned forward and kissed her deeply. The initial surprise on the woman's face was replaced by acceptance as she closed her eyes and let herself get lost in the feeling of the kiss she felt herself return it with just as much enthusiasm as he was giving her. When they finally stopped for air the two of them just looked at each other as if they could not believe what was happening.

"You know, now would be the time that something terrible is going to happen," Ranma said quietly.

Nabiki smiled, "Knowing you, I would expect no less."

"Ranma!" A voice yelled on cue, "I will not let you hurt Akane's sister!"

Ranma blew out a breath of exasperation and kicked the charging Ryouga in the face, "Good to see you too, man."

As the foot was removed from his face, Ryouga yelled back, "Don't play dumb with me, I know exactly who you are and what you plan on doing."

"That's nice, care to tell me so I can know," Ranma shook his head and dodged a punch from the man that was attacking him, "I mean, I'm the one with amnesia here."

Ryouga aimed a kick at the man's head that passed harmlessly, "A man came to me and told me that you work for a secret corporation intent on taking over the world and there are multiple clones that you agreed to help them make. They look exactly like you. Or maybe you are one of them."

The man had to restrain himself from laughing as much as possible as he fought to keep his attention on the fight and not the ludicrous explanation, "Are you serious, that is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. You just believed his word on this?"

Ryouga paused for a second and sneered, "You know, somehow I thought you wouldn't believe me. I didn't believe him at first either. Then I saw this tape that he gave to me and that's all the proof I need."

"You have a tape?" Ranma asked as he grew excited, "Let me see it!"

"You can have it after I beat you to an inch of your life," Ryouga exclaimed as he leapt at Ranma once again.

Ranma dodged the kick that was aimed at his midsection before he leapt up and flipped over Ryouga. The man turned and tried to punch Ranma on his way down but could not connect as Ranma was not there. The man blinked before he felt a tap on his shoulder and a tape was presented before his face as if someone was standing on his head.

I hate when you do that," Ryouga said levelly, "Fine, take the tape but just know that I will not be so easy on you next time. I will not allow you to take over the world."

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That's all you get for Chapter Two, a bit shorter but I felt it necessary to end it there. You'll find out about the tape next chapter. By the way, someone please point out if I start making Ranma into some demigod. I would like to avoid that pitfall that seems to happen in a lot of other stories. Other than that, have fun reading the story.


	3. 3rd Book of Amnesia

Ranma 1/2

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I own none of these characters, just the story that I have put them into. For a more in depth rant try reading my other story, For Future Times. It may or may not be posted by now.

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Remembrance

Chapter 3

Ranma jumped down and landed lightly with a wave, "Yeah, you have fun with that whole thing. I'm going to try to figure out who I am in the meantime."

The man with the tape hummed happily as he walked back towards the house with the tape in his hand. It was a tape that held many possibilities, one of which was offering a clue as to who he was. The other was finding out what he used to do that would get a person like Ryouga aggravated, not that it was all that hard to get him aggravated to tell the truth. Nabiki followed behind him, curious as to what the whole exchange had been about in the first place. She had heard Ryouga yell and wisely stood back so she was not in harms way. It would do no good for her to get hurt by either of the overly powerful martial artists.

Ranma inserted the tape into the video player and turned on the television, waiting as the screen came to life. As it did it showed a man in a white jacket wearing glasses came on the screen. There was a short introduction to the experiment and a long speech on what cause the experiment was. This was pretty much summed up to be that a super soldier was to be created to help with any war that was getting out of hand. Once this was over with the man moved to an enclosed room with a tank full of liquid. In the tank was a man who looked pretty average. Sitting in a chair next to the tank was Ranma, strapped down and looking a little irritated but cooperating just the same.

The doctor gave the sign to start the experiment and what looked to be automated needles stuck themselves into each of Ranma's arms. Blood began to flow through the tubes for about two minutes before the needles withdrew themselves and the restraints were released. The blood eventually came to a tank and was mixed with some kind of green liquid before it was heated and pumped through more tubes into the tank. The reaction inside the tank was... interesting. Bubbles started to rise as the man in the tank flailed around and started to scream in what could only be pain. Eventually the bubbles shrouded the view of the man an only the screams could be heard for a while. Then the screams went away and the bubbles subsided. What was left was a man that looked a lot like Ranma but not quiet exactly the same. Both Ranma and the man were taken away in wheelchairs and the doctor came back on looking exited. He got only one word out about being overjoyed at the success of the experiment before Ranma turned the video off and took the tape out. He stared at it for a second before he closed his eyes and crushed the tape in his hand.

"Ranma?" Nabiki asked in concern.

The man let the pieces of the tape fall to the floor, his open hand revealing where one of the sharper pieces had cut his hand lightly, "So that's who I was, I was a guinea pig. I could have lived without that."

Nabiki gasped as she saw the cut, "Hold on, I'll get something for that cut."

The man shook his head, "Don't bother, someone like me doesn't have a need for that. Just give me a couple minutes."

"Ranma, what's wrong?"

The man stared at her sharply, "I just saw myself being used to make a super soldier and you ask me what's wrong. I don't know, you tell me."

Nabiki sighed, "Okay, it was a stupid question, but it's not like it's the end of the world."

"No, just the end of any sense of decency I ever had," Ranma returned, "I'm nothing but walking spare body parts."

What happened next was a surprise to both the martial artist and the woman standing across from him. The surprise was actually greater than the actual hit that had come from the woman. Ranma blinked a few times before he rubbed his cheek and frowned. Nabiki had just slapped him in the face, not just metaphorically but actually hit him. The man was having trouble figuring out just what the hell was going on.

"Wha- What the hell?"

Nabiki looked at her own hand in shock before she frowned at him, "You know, I'm just as surprised as you are that I did that. However, the reason for it is the fact that I've never seen you so pitiful. I mean what the hell, Ranma?"

The man smiled sadly and conceded, "I see, you're right. I shouldn't let this get me down. Besides, I need to continue seeking answers."

The woman across from him gave him a wry smile, "You know, that is exactly the answer I would expect from someone like you. Prideful and determined, and an idiot."

The man blinked as a smile came across Nabiki's face at the words, he frowned at first then shrugged, "Oh, well, I have you to make up for my lack of brains. How much do I owe you for that tip."

The woman smiled as he began to reach for his wallet, she leaned in and kissed him for a second before saying, "Ranma, baby, as far as that kind of information is concerned, I'd say free is a price I can accept."

Ranma grinned and shook his head, "Oh well, and here I had a new 50,000 Yen bill that I need to part with."

"50,000?" Nabiki's eyes went wide as she heard his words, then she placed a hand over her mouth and coughed slightly before composing herself, "Yes, well, I guess free is a bit much, I mean that amount will pay for it."

Shrugging, Ranma shook his finger in admonishment, "Going back on your word is not good, Nabiki-san."

"Why you!" The woman yelled in mock anger, "that's not fair."

Ranma smiled and waved said bill in the woman's face, "Come get it,

Na-bi-ki-chan, if you can."

"Why you," The woman yelled, "I'll get you for saying my name like that, and I'll get that money from you."

"Oh really," Ranma continued to taunt the woman as he danced out of the reach of her grasp as if it was nothing.

Nabiki, for her part, was trying with everything she had to catch the martial artist and make him pay for this humiliation. She was the one who was supposed to do these kinds of things to him, she could not win with her physical prowess alone. She had to use the part of her that had always had an advantage of this man, her mind. Nabiki was aware that a lot had changed in Ranma since he had been away but she was sure that he would not be able to cope with how sharp her own mind had gotten when she wanted it to be. It was definitely time to show

Ranma just what kind of woman she could be when you messed with her.

Nabiki stopped suddenly and turned away from the man, "You are so mean, Ranma.

Despite saying otherwise you continue to show that you think that all I care for is money."

The man was surprised by the fact that tears suddenly started to appear in

Nabiki's eyes as she spoke to him, "Wait, Nabiki, That's not what I, I didn't mean..."

The woman looked over her shoulder with fake tears in her eyes and the man began to stutter an apology. This was exactly how she had thought he would act, he had not really changed, just become really good at repressing his inner feelings.

Now that she had brought the real him out it would be easy to repay him for teasing her like that. An evil grin crept on her face but she quickly suppressed it and continued her act.

Looking as sad as she could, Nabiki put a hand to her mouth looking down and making her eyes shimmer slightly, "Ranma, how could you do this? I thought you loved me."

"Nabiki, I'm sorry," Ranma said desperately as he went to embrace her.

With a smile of victory, Nabiki grabbed the money in the man's hand and stuffed it in her pocket, "Ha, gotcha."

Ranma blinked and looked at his hand before he fixed the woman with a withering glare, "That was low."

"You started it," Nabiki said with a winning smile.

The man frowned, "I guess I did. Now come here you."

"Eek!" Nabiki ran away in mock fear as Ranma gave chase to her, they both knew this was a game, "No, you evil man!"

Ranma followed Nabiki inside her house and gave chase to her as they ran through the living room, yelling like little kids. The chase wound through the house with no real direction, making its way upstairs and through the rooms. Hitomi, who had gone to sleep, walked out of her room rubbing her eyes and blinking at the scene. She was not sure whether to laugh or make plans to see a physiologist. Of course she was too young to really know what one of those were but she had always heard her mother talking about one when she had a really stressful day at work and acted angry. Then something happened that none of the people involved expected, Ranma stumbled over something as the two were making their way back down the stairs and fell. He would have fallen on Nabiki had he not grabbed her and pulled the woman into him as he turned and tucked into a ball in order to protect her from harm as much as possible. The two rolled downstairs and came to a rest against the backside of a couch with Ranma on the bottom.

"Oh- Ouch," Ranma managed to mutter as he lay dazed, "That sucked."

Nabiki looked a little shaken but otherwise fine, "You okay, Ranma? That was a bad fall."

Ranma managed to raise his head just enough to see the look of concern in the woman's face, "Yeah, Biki, I'll live. How about you?"

"I'm fine," The woman said as she rolled off of him and helped him sit up strait, "You took most of the impact."

The two of them heard two little feet running down the stairs as fast as they could and Ranma was suddenly assaulted by a blur of brown hair in sleeping apparel. The man yelled in surprise as he fell back once again and hit the back of his head on the floor. He looked up to see a face that belonged to a small girl hovering over him with a look of worry. Nabiki gasped as he grimaced in pain at the impact.

"Are you alright Daddy?" Hitomi seemed like she was about to cry.

Gritting his teeth in pain, Ranma held the back of his head, "Hitomi, please don't do that. Did you just call me Daddy?"

Nabiki was looking at the two of them with wide eyes, "Hitomi..."

"In any case, please get off me, Hitomi," Ranma said, "I need to stand up."

The little girl looked a little sad but did as the man said, allowing Ranma to sit up. Taking a few deep breaths he then attempted to stand up before he wobbled and caught himself on the couch. Nabiki stood and was about to help him before he waved her off and tried to stand once again. This second attempt was met with more success than the first and Ranma walked around to settle on the couch.

"You sure you're going to be okay, Ranma?" Nabiki asked.

The man nodded, "Sure, I'll be fine. Just need to rest."

"Okay, I'm going to put Hitomi to bed," Nabiki said, "I'll be right back."

Ranma nodded and closed his eyes, letting his body drift into the calming darkness that wanted to surround him. The darkness gave way to images of a life that he could not remember, a girl with short black hair yelling at a calm woman with short brown hair. As the two argued, a third girl, almost a woman in her own right, came in and started to chide the two for arguing. The girl with black hair yelled about how she was not arguing and turned her back and walked out of the room. As she did so the girl with short brown hair sighed and shook her head before going her own way. The view changed to one of the short haired girl with dark hair looking angry and a hand coming across the screen and then blackness. The scene then came back and showed a woman with black hair done in a pig-tail that was broken on the sides by red hair. She looked serious about something but he did not know what it was and she just threw up her hands and walked the other way. The scene went dark again and Ranma heard someone calling his name, seeming to be far away. He opened his eyes and found Nabiki looking at him with an expression that was difficult for him to interpret.

"Hey, how's it going?" She asked.

Smiling, he responded, "I'm still in a little pain but nothing I can't handle."

"Good... Hey if you feel like you need it," The woman paused and looked away for a second, "I mean... you can sleep... that is if you need to..."

The man just waved his hand, "No, I don't need a bed Nabiki."

She nodded and looked a little disappointed, "I see, well goodnight."

Ranma watched as she started to walk away and then sighed and laid himself down across the length of the couch. Sleep came fast mostly because he was a little sore from falling down the stairs in the first place. He never felt Nabiki come back and place a blanket over him and a pillow under his head. On a whim she leaned over and gave a hesitant hug before she ascended the stairs to check on Hitomi and go to her own room to get some sleep.

Morning came, and Nabiki woke to the sound of her alarm sounding, sitting up she ran a hand through her mussed hair. Shaking her head to try to clear the feeling of wariness from her head. This made her a little dizzier and she stuck her tongue out at the feeling that came over her from her previous actions. It was then she heard a chuckle from the door and looked over to see Ranma dressed in his jeans from before and a white shirt. He was leaning against the door frame with his arms folded across his chest and a smile on his face.

"You still haven't lost your cuteness," The man said as he leaned forward and started to walk towards her, "I hope you don't mind but I made you breakfast."

Nabiki stood and noticed that Ranma had suddenly frozen in place with a look on his face as if he was a deer in the headlights. It was then that she looked down at her self and realized that she had gotten too used to living alone. Because there was nobody around to see her she became used to sleeping in very sheer fabric. So sheer in fact that there was nothing above the chest that was left to the imagination. She still wore underwear to bed but the whole scene had the effect of short circuiting Ranma's mind. The woman smiled and calmly walked over to her closet and pulled out a bathrobe and wrapped it around herself.

"So did you enjoy the show," Nabiki said while oozing sensuality.

Ranma was red in the face and still looked like he was scared out of his mind, "Uh... Y... ye... yes, I mean no, I mean..."

The woman walked up to him with a smile, "You're hopeless. It's okay, I'm covered now and that was my fault. I'm not like my sister, I understand the circumstances."

The look slowly went away from Ranma's face and Nabiki smiled and placed her index finger in the middle of his forehead, "What are you doing?"

The woman pushed slightly and the man started to fall back, "I'm testing to see if you are fully recovered. Maybe you are a pervert."

Regaining his balance, Ranma looked at her in outrage, "That's not fair."

"Oh, I was hoping you were as much of a pervert as me," Nabiki said with a smirk, "I mean why else would I want a man that changes into a woman."

Ranma scratched his head, "I really wish you would stop playing with my emotions like that, Biki-chan."

"But you're so cute when you get that look," Nabiki said, "So what's for breakfast?"

The man looked glad for the change in subject and made to answer her, "Well I don't know how but I knew how to make some western food so I figured I would try that."

"I see, I'll be down after I get ready then," Nabiki said, "Oh, and can you take Hitomi to school today. Usually I don't have time to eat breakfast because her school is out of my way."

"As long as you promise me that you'll start eating breakfast regularly," Ranma replied, "I'll go wake up Hitomi."

The woman nodded and watched the man depart her room with a smile, he was so innocent even now. He had hardly changed even in the long time it had been since she had seen him last. There was a moment of sorrow as she thought of that but she hardened herself and ignored the feeling. It did not matter, he was here now and that was the important part, he had come back to them. While they had all went their separate ways and yet Ranma was back and with him the old feelings that he had taken with him.

Granted, when he was around the bills at the Dojo were through the roof because of the repairs. That was not the important part though, while he was there it was a happy home and never dull. Daddy had been so happy when Ranma came and he had only became more joyous as the years went by. It used to be that any mention of their departed mother sent him into a fit of crying. After those times with Ranma he had gotten better, he was not totally cured but he was much better than he had been. Akane had become less violent at others, just more violent at him, and Kasumi had started to express herself more.

Deciding she had reminisced enough, Nabiki went to the bathroom and prepared herself to go to work. Outside, Ranma was making his way into Hitomi's room in order to wake the girl up. As he walked into her room, he was surprised to see that her room was actually sparse for a girl's room. He expected a bunch of pink and stuffed animals everywhere. What he ended up getting was a room with a bed, a closet, and a trunk at the end of the bed, white sheets, and a girl sleeping with a single stuffed animal that looked to be a plush black piglet. Ranma did not know why but he had the sudden urge to laugh at the stuffed animal, it seemed to remind him of something though he was not sure what. Ranma called the girls name as he walked up to the bed, causing the girl to stir in her sleep and open her eyes slightly. Apparently she had not expected him to be there because when she saw him she screamed and threw the stuffed animal at him.

Ranma, for his part, seemed to take it in stride as he caught the pig in one hand and made a hushing motion with the other hand. Once the girl realized who it was that had entered her room she went silent and looked a little sheepish at her actions. Ranma tossed the stuffed animal back to her and smiled as he walked up to her.

"Hey, how's it going kiddo?" Ranma asked, "Your mom asked me to take you to school this morning."

"Really?" The girl asked as she sat up, "That's great!"

Ranma blinked, "Is it?"

The girl nodded frantically and jumped up, wrapping her arms around him, "This way I can actually talk to someone without being in a big hurry."

Ranma was starting to get a little nervous at this, he was not the best conversationalist after all, "I guess, you better get ready in that case... I'll be downstairs."

Hitomi nodded, "Alright."

Ranma drew a retreat and headed downstairs where Nabiki was already sitting down at the table and eating her breakfast. The man shook his head and the woman looked up at him with questioning eyes as she chewed her food. For his part, Ranma just waved it off and sat down across from her. Being so bad at conversation had its drawbacks, like awkward silence at the table. Nabiki did not seem to mind so much however. She was enjoying the meal he made and Ranma was enjoying how quiet it was around, he had a feeling that this was not going to last all that long.

It did not take long for Hitomi to make her way down the stairs and eat, Nabiki had finished and left a few minutes after the girl took her seat. Once Hitomi finished her meal, Ranma made sure she had everything she needed for school and the two of them made their way towards the place of learning.

Ranma looked at his watch and realized that the two of them had plenty of time to spare so he took on a leisurely pace and held onto the girl's hand. It was when they reached the school gates that the two of them encountered trouble. A man in a business suit stood in the gates of the school, dark glasses covered his eyes but he looked stern enough. As they got closer to the man, he removed his glasses and fixed Ranma with a look that promised trouble if he did anything wrong.

"Hello, my name is Mr. Kuno," The man said as he ran a hand through his groomed brown hair, "I am the Principle at this school. Forgive my rudeness but where is this young ladies mother."

Something about this man immediately rubbed Ranma the wrong way, "She is at her work, and Hitomi has to get to class."

The man nodded and stepped aside, "Quiet right, and please stop by my office once you have dropped young Hitomi off."

The martial artist nodded, "Yes, you can count on that."

Ranma made his way to the classroom where Hitomi was to be dropped off before he walked back down the hall to the place where the principles office was, a place he was not looking forward to going. As he knocked on the door a voice beckoned him to enter and he turned the knob to the room. The door opened and the man from before stood in the center of the room with a wooden sword in his hands held so that every few seconds he took a swing with the sword. Ranma politely cleared his throat and the man answered him without looking.

"I'm quiet aware that you're here fool!" he stopped swinging and pointed at the pig-tailed man with the wooden weapon, "I was the one who told you to enter my establishment after all."

Ranma let a look of irritation show on his continence, "Look, buddy, I don't know who you think you are but I just want to get out of here. So stop with the flowery talk and tell me what you wanted to talk to me about."

The man smirked and dropped the sword to his side, placing a hand on his forehead as he looked to the side and smirked, "Such uncouth words, a cur like you would know nothing of the relationship between me and that little ones mother. She is much too cultured to like a brute like you, I worry for nothing apparently."

"This was all out of some petty jealousness," Ranma remarked incredulously, "What kind of an idiot are you? And what do you mean by the relationship between you and Nabiki?"

The man whipped his head around to look at Ranma with anger and clenched his fist dramatically, "That woman stole my heart before she ran off with that child of my blood!"

There was a pause and a wind seemed to pass though the enclosed room, "You mean you're Hitomi's father?" Ranma asked uncertainly.

"Knave, how could you not know!" The man was shaking with anger, "That evil, detested, conniving, woman ran from me while she was birthing the child and left me in my depression while she enjoyed the spoils."

Ranma looked up at the ceiling and scratched the back of his head, "Uh, look man, I don't usually tell people how to live their lives but, are you absolutely insane. Spoils? Depression? Birthing the child? In what way is Hitomi your spoils, I mean Nabiki was the one who brought her into the world. And your choice of words in the matter is horrible, you treat them like objects. I mean

Biki-chan is a sneak but come on."

"What did you call her?" the man interrupted him suddenly, "What is your relationship to her?"

"Well I live at her house-." Was as far as Ranma could get.

Ranma dodged a swing from the man's wooden sword as he heard the yell,

"Intolerable!"

Instinct took over as the man took swing after swing at the martial artist, Ranma was plenty fast but this man was good. He was better, in fact, that the man he had faced earlier. The martial artist was also restricted in his movement in the small room, but that meant that the man was also restricted with his weapon needing more room to swing. Still, Ranma needed to end this quick before things got too out of control.

It was then that the door opened, "Principle you have a-."

Ranma was just in time to shelter the man as he dove in front of the door,

"Watch out!"

The cut that formed from where he had been hit was deep and painful, if the man could do that with a wooden sword then a real sword would have most likely killed him. Ranma quickly pushed the man out the door and slammed it shut before he lunged out of the way of yet another swipe of the wooden sword. Ranma was having trouble here, it would have been no contest if he had not been cut but the place it had cut his arm had temporarily rendered the arm useless. Deciding to use drastic measures, Ranma summoned his energy and used his one good arm to unleash a flurry of punches on the man. Eventually he knocked the man out and stood hunched over holding his bad arm and trying to stop the bleeding.

"Oh man, I hope Hitomi didn't get any of that man's personality," Ranma gasped as he took a deep breath and stood strait, "What an insane moron."

There was a knock on the door suddenly and Ranma panicked, he did not want to be caught in the office with the principle knocked out like this. Thinking quickly he decided he would have to jump out the window just as the doorknob turned. The secretary from before opened the door but only saw a devastated office, a knocked out principle, and an opened window with curtains blowing in the breeze.

Ranma had other things on his mind, like the fact that seeing the name Kuno as he leapt out the window had brought up a group of images of a sword swinging maniac. Unfortunately he happened to be falling from the fourth story of Furinkan High as this flash of memory came to mind. As the flash ended Ranma realized that he was upside down and only about ten feet in the air, panicking he tried to right himself too late and landed awkwardly on his feet before stumbling forward and skidding across the ground hard on his bad arm. He was not sure but it felt like the arm had been knocked out of joint with the fall.

Grunting and standing slowly, the man looked around and cursed, why did these visions always seem to come at the worst times. With a sigh, Ranma decided to make his way to a doctor's office. As he walked out of the gated school however he felt something on the edge of his senses warn him of inherent danger and stopped completely as a short throwing knife just missed imbedding itself in his face. Irritated, the man turned to look the direction the knife had come from and saw a thin man who obviously favored the use of knifes as they adorned his entire body, next to him was a woman that looked strikingly familiar. In fact she looked exactly like the woman with multi-colored hair he had seen in his vision.

"Agent R, how nice to see you," The thin man said in a voice that sounded like air escaping from a balloon, "It is unfortunate that it has come to this but you should know better than anyone the consequences of being a rouge agent."

Ranma sighed, "Right, can we just get this over with? Obviously you favor throwing knives and therefore have no way to defend yourself in close. I have already beaten you. As for the lady over there, well that might be a tough fight since I only have one arm but I'm sure I'll figure out something.

The thin man grinned, "You are as confident as ever, Agent, but you must die now."

Faster than the martial artist could follow, a barrage of knifes which Ranma dodged easily. Then he charged forward and before either of the two opponents could react, kicked the man in the jaw and sent him into the air before jumping back and bringing his good hand up to a defensive position. He was expecting the girl to attack next, she was a wild card because she had shown no indication of even wanting to attack the whole time. Now that she was the only one left, she slowly got into a stance herself and stared uncomfortably at the man in front of her. From what Ranma could gather it was as if she was forcing herself to do something she really did not want to do.

The man that Ranma had knocked to the ground earlier sat up and grinned, "Now you're in trouble, RS1, AY2 here has trouble holding back against opponents."

Ranma looked from the man back to the girl, "That may be true but she really doesn't seem to be thinking of me as an opponent right now."

The man growled and looked at the Agent he called "AY2", "Get you're thoughts strait, unless you want to be hunted also, kill the traitor!"

Looking over at the thin man the girl spoke for the first time since the confrontation, "I don't believe he could have been a traitor, there must be an explanation," she looked back at Ranma, "Right?"

For his part, Ranma was taken back by that last part, it was as if she was pleading with him, "Uh, sure, the truth is that I don't know if there is or not.

You see, I kinda got amnesia."

The girl sighed with relief but the man stood and growled, "That is no excuse, you have still defected and must be dealt with."

"AY2" looked at the man with a downcast expression, she knew he was right, "I'm sorry Ranma, I wish it didn't have to be this way, you were like a brother to me."

The flash of memory from earlier came back but this time it was accompanied by words:

_"Are you listening to me Ranma? Please don't accept this mission. It's certain death. You have always been impulsive before and came out on top but this is different. In order to get this information you must sneak past heavy security and then get the information without being caught. It's too much for you to handle. Please listen to me, if I was to ever lose you I don't know what would happen, you're like the brother I never had. I never even had a family because of this stupid laboratory._

"Fine throw your life away, idiot."

"Akemi?" Ranma found the name springing from his lips before he could stop it, "I understand."

The girl grit her teeth, "Just shut up, the longer we talk the harder this is going to be for me."

With that the woman charged forward and launched a kick at the martial artist's head which he leaned to the side to dodge. He was not going to fight back, there was not much he could do against her skill level with one arm anyways. The woman followed the kick with a jab which Ranma spun around only to be on the receiving end of an elbow to the face. Stumbling back, Ranma frowned at the hit. He had been clumsy and not seen the obvious attack. His danger sense went off yet again and he jumped out of the way just in time for a barrage of knives to fly by under him. Enraged, Ranma came down top of the thing man and knocked all of the air out of him, leaving him unconscious.

"Enough with the damn knives!"

Ranma turned to face the woman again and sneered, "Look, lady, are you going to fight me for real or what? Granted I'm not as capable as usual right now but a baby could defeat you right now."

Akemi had always felt strongly about her martial ability and never took lightly when someone insulted them, "Ranma! Damn you, you want me to fight for real then here I come."

Before he could blink she was in front of him throwing punch after punch as fast as she could. With only one working arm, Ranma was doing his best to prevent the punches from getting through but it was a futile effort. Of course he still was not going to retaliate but at this rate he would be dead faster than he wanted.

"Ranma," This was from a new smaller voice.

The male martial artist looked up in time to see Hitomi standing there and staring at them. He could only guess it was lunch time and that was why she was out here. Jumping back, Ranma put some distance between him and the woman, that was when he heard the weak chuckle.

"So you care for that brat, then live with her death if you won't die," Ranma watched helplessly as knives flew towards the little girl.

Everything burned with redness as he screamed, "Hitomi!"

There was no in between movement, Ranma was there instantly, catching those knives he could and absorbing the rest into his body. He was too angry to notice those however as, once the knives had been stopped, he disappeared again only to reappear next to the man with both the thin man's arms in his hand.

"You pride yourself on your knife throwing," Ranma said dangerously, "Just to get to me you would hurt an innocent child. I won't forgive you!"

The woman known as Akemi gasped as the martial artist started to put pressure on the man's arms. Never had she seen him this enraged, he had never done something so brutal to anyone. This was not right, granted it was low for her partner to resort to what he had but Ranma had never been so brutal. Desperately she called at to the enraged martial artist.

"Ranma, stop! He's not worth it, please stop."

The man looked at her and sneered, "Oh, I know he's not worth it, but trying to hurt Hitomi like that is going to far."

With a sickening crunch, and a blood curdling scream, one wrist shattered under the insane strength of the martial artist, "Ranma please."

Akemi was surprised that she felt tears in her eyes, this was not the Ranma she knew. The man she knew was kind and even when fighting would never going past what he absolutely needed to. He never killed or hurt out of spite and he never tried to cripple someone no matter how much he hated them.

"Ranma-papa, please stop!" Hitomi did not understand what was going on but judging by the way that the other woman was acting it was nothing good.

The martial artist looked up at the little girl and then looked to the woman in front of him who had tears in her eyes. Somewhere in the back of his mind he felt a rational thought come through and dropped the man's good arm in horror. The rage ebbed away and left only the pain from the knife cuts in his mind and throughout his body.

"Oh man, what was I about to do?" Ranma collapsed more from the pain than from disbelief, "I think I'm done for the day. Stick a fork in me."

Akemi watched as Ranma passed out from the pain and the strain on his body, she could easily take him out now. She spared a glance at the little girl looking on with some uneasiness, how could she kill him in front of a child. The others had always accused her of being too soft but this was a child for crying out loud.

"Miss," the little girl said as she walked up to the woman, "Will papa be alright?"

Akemi blinked, "Papa?"

Hitomi nodded, "Yes, him and mom have been living together so I though he was my father. I never knew my real father."

The woman sighed, now she was unsure if she could kill Ranma even out of this girls sight, "Well I can tell you that he is not you're real father, kid, but yes he will be alright. You had better get back to school, okay little girl."

The girl nodded, "Yes, thank you for taking care of my... Ranma."

Akemi sighed again, "Uh, yeah, sure."

"See you lady," With that the little girl ran off to her class.

The woman looked at the passed out body of the man known as Ranma and shook her head, "I swear, I don't know why I even bother with you sometimes. I think I just signed my own death warrant here."

"Akemi, you stupid woman," the man who had previously been her partner yelled in pain, "You know you're as good as dead now."

The woman looked back at the man for a second before she looked strait once more and made her way to the nearest doctor's office. It was not long before she came across a small clinic that, though small, she knew it was better than waiting for a long time and finding a hospital. At least here they could treat Ranma and stop some of the bleeding before operating on him. She hoped that it did not come to that but as bad as some of the wounds were she could not avoid the fact that it might.

Opening the door to the small clinic with the man on her back she yelled out to see if anyone was there. There was some fumbling from somewhere in the back before a man with long brown hair in a pony-tail and glasses walked out with a smile. He seemed to be in his forties with good muscular tone.

"Excuse me," Akemi said as the doctor came out, "I need your help. This man has been hurt and needs treatment."

The man raised an eyebrow and looked at the two, "I see, well just follow me into my examination room and I'll look at him."

The girl did as the man said and waited patiently while the doctor looked over the man. It did not take a long time and when he was finished the man looked over at her. Wordlessly he walked out of the room and came back with some water and medicine which he put in the man's mouth. Hitting a pressure point, Ranma seemed to instinctively swallow the pill and the water.

"He will be fine, I just gave him a little something to replenish his lost resources. It's a vitamin supplement that will help his recovery." The doctor sat down across from the standing girl and continued, "He does not really need such a thing, and he is recovering from those knife wounds faster than humanly possible."

Akemi nodded, "I was hoping the wounds weren't that bad."

The doctor cleared his throat, "No, they are very bad, a normal person would have been permanently crippled if their arm looked like his, his arm is healing itself fully, on its own. Those wounds from the knife should have killed him before he even got here."

The woman thought for a second, "He's been that way ever since I knew him. I wonder if he was one of the soldiers."

There was a movement from the bed and Ranma sat up slowly, "Well I'm in some pain here."

The woman, Akemi looked over at the man she had brought in and saw him holding his head with his eyes closed, "Damn crazy people always attacking me."

"I see you're awake, that was faster than usual, Ranma," The doctor said as he came in holding some bandages and cleaning alcohol.

The man held out his arm as if it was still a standard routine from when he had been a teenager in Nerima during his school days. He did not find it weird that Dr. Tofu knew who he was, he had stopped being surprised by how enigmatic the doctor was a long time ago. He realized that he somehow knew who the doctor was but had no idea why that was. He had lost his memory of everyone else, why was this single person the one who stuck in his mind. Was it possible that the doctor had stuck in his head from all of the times he had operated on him? He did not know but he would definitely try to figure that out in between figuring out everything else that was happening here. The doctor started to clean his wounds and bandage him up as he looked over at the woman with multi colored hair.

"So you brought me here, huh?" Ranma looked down at his still bad right arm, now bandaged from the top of his bicep to his wrist and moved it a little, "I have to admit I thought your duty would come before your feelings. I remember you being more committed than this."

Akemi frowned and folded her arms behind her head, elbows pointed upward at an angle, "I was committed but what's the use of being committed to something when the person you tried so hard to impress is dead."

Ranma chuckled, "Hey doc, she remind you of someone?"

The doctor looked of from where he was cleaning the wounds on his stomach where he had caught three knives that barely avoided vital organs, "Well now that you mention it, with her standing like that she seems like a younger you. How old is she, 18?"

The doctor started to bandage his stomach as Ranma looked at her and seemed to think about it for a second, "Not sure, she looks about that old."

Akemi looked at Ranma in irritation, "What're you looking at?"

"Well, I occurs to me that I know little about you beside your name," Ranma held out his left arm and the doctor cleaned the few cuts that were on it before he bandaged the portion from the forearm to the start of his fingers.

Akemi dropped her arms to her side and looked at him in disbelief, "You don't remember much about me, and we were partners! I do not believe this."

Ranma flexed his left hand and nodded, "Thanks doc, I'll explain everything to you a little later."

The man positioned himself so that he could drape his legs over the side and slide off to a standing position. With fluidness that hid how hurt he actually was, Ranma sighed at his torn shirt and casually discarded it with a frown. The only real choice he had was to go around without a shirt for now, at least it was not his silk shirt from when he was a kid. The jeans left a lot to be desired in terms of flexibility but they were loose enough to make up for that fact.

"Alright, better get back to the house," Ranma said as he started to walk out of the room, "I want to cook dinner tonight, Nabiki's going to need some rest."

Tofu grinned at that, "So, how is Nabiki? Kasumi has been a little worried about her ever since her divorce."

Ranma turned back to the doctor, "Uh, she's doing fine, like I said before, I'll catch up with you later."

With that the man quickly made his way out of the clinic followed by Akemi who was not going to let him out of sight for a second. She walked behind him and hoped he would not say anything or, indeed, even notice that she had decided to follow after him. She knew the last part was too much to hope for but it was not beyond her to hope for the impossible, actually it was more of an improbability.

It was still day out, probably about two in the afternoon if she had to guess, and the sun was free to shine through the cloudless blue sky. The wind blew with an intensity that was not so much saying "run along and get inside", but instead "enjoy this time because you are not going to get the chance for a while".

Akemi looked at Ranma who had stopped next to a window, for a second she thought he was going to yell at her for following him, but he just stared. The girl waited for him to do something but he seemed entranced. In fact it was getting on her nerves a little. Walking up to where he was standing, he was about to give him a piece of her mind before she saw the object that held his attention.

"Wow," it was really all she could say at the jewelry she saw.

Ranma turned to her and chuckled, "Yeah, a lot of this stuff is really overdone but this is perfect."

Akemi nodded, "Just out of curiosity, who is it for?"

When she asked this question, the man did something she had never seen him do before. He blushed bright red and turned to walk quickly down the street as if he was running away from the question, which was exactly what he was doing.

Akemi jogged to catch up with him and smiled as she glanced over to see the redness still burning his cheeks.

"I think that would look good on her," the girl said absently.

Ranma stopped and turned to her, "How would you know, you never met... Damn."

Akemi let out a little laugh, "I knew it. You have a girlfriend. Maybe that's why you stopped being a spy."

"What are you talking about!" Ranma turned from being embarrassed to being angry in a second, "Look, I told you. I have amnesia so I can't even remember that I was a secret agent. I don't want your delusions to get Nabiki hurt alright."

The girl put her hands up in a gesture to ward off his anger, "Alright, man! This is our little secret."

"I guess that's the best I can ask for," Ranma sighed and stuffed his hands in his pockets.

There was idle chatter around him as he walked down the street in the direction of the house. He would have to be sure to make Nabiki a good diner when she got home from work to lessen the verbal thrashing he was sure to get. It took a while before he actually got back to the house and the girl who was following him every step of the way was causing him to be distracted also.

When he opened the wooden door and stepped inside he immediately smelled something far better than he had been expecting. Walking to the kitchen with the girl in tow he soon found the reason for this. It was not Nabiki cooking but her older sister in front of the stove top with an apron on. She was humming a song to herself and seemed to be in her own little world, she did not even acknowledge that the two of them were there. The man shrugged and walked out of the kitchen and into the living room towards the couch that was set up in front of the television. When he got there he found the reason that it was Kasumi and not Nabiki cooking. Passed out on the couch was the woman he was expecting with a pillow under her head and a blanket lay carefully on top of her. What was more, on top of her was her daughter.

The man smiled to himself and turned back towards the kitchen only to find Akemi looking over the pony tailed woman's shoulder. The girl was practically drooling... actually she was drooling at the look and smell of the food. Ranma walked over to her and grabbed her by an ear and led her out of the kitchen so that the woman with long brown hair could finish cooking her meal.

Once they were out of the cooking area, Ranma let the girl go and was on the receiving end of a nasty glare, "That hurt you moron!"

"Well sorry, I didn't want you to get your drool in the food," Ranma countered calmly as he sat down on a reclining chair in the living room.

Akemi just stuck her tongue out at the man in anger and stormed off towards the kitchen once more. Ranma decided he would go get a breath of fresh air, the night was cool and clear as Ranma opened the door and took a step out onto the patio. A breeze of cool air ruffled his hair slightly and with a fluid movement he leapt to the roof. Landing lightly he proceeded to sit in the cross-leg position and looked out upon the pale lighted neighborhood he now lived in. It was quaint and held a charm that, while plain, seemed to exude a sense of well-being.

With the feeling of peace that he was feeling at that moment it was perfectly natural for him to be totally confused when an explosion rocked the foundation of the house. Quickly running to the edge of the roof near the back of the house he found the yard and part of the house on fire. An orange glow cast an urgent glow on its surroundings as the fire consumed everything it touched. In the flames lit the yard and Ranma saw a man dressed in a flowing robe holding a clawed weapon in each hand. He smiled madly at Ranma as the man faced him.

"Agent, you have gained another traitor and taken care of another agent that while not very good," The man moved to an offensive stance, "was still part of our organization. Not very smart when we know where you live."

Ranma grit his teeth, "Damn you, if you hurt anyone in my family I will kill you. I will do it slowly and painfully."

The man pointed to the house, "Then what are you waiting for."

Ranma slowly looked to where the man was pointed and saw Akemi had shielded the others with her body. As a result she had several fresh cuts from where she had been grazed but also some shrapnel had imbedded itself in her arms and upper body, she was very weakly managing to stay on her feet. The man turned back to his enemy and was suddenly surrounded by an aura of dark blue that seemed to drown everything out.

"You would hurt those I care about," Ranma all but roared, "I will take payment from you, in small installments, with interest."

With those words he charged forward and dodged a claw that grazed his face only to counter with a right elbow to his enemies face. In rapid succession he brought an open hand under his elbow and hit the man in the stomach before ducking with a spin and sweeping the man's legs out from under him. Ranma then returned to his feet and stomped on the man's stomach as he lay on the ground helpless. He did not let up for some time even after the man had stopped moving.

Ranma finally fell down out of breath, "Damn you, damn you, damn you, why did you have to go and hurt her."

Everyone looked at the distraught man with a mix of fear and trepidation, then the taunting laughter began as the man in the cloak rose to his feet as if he was being lifted by an invisible platform. Ranma frowned in the orange glow the flames and clenched his fists in a show of anger. He was not like this situation one bit, he had hit the man in the cloak with enough force to cripple a normal man and he was still getting up.

"I know what you're thinking," the man said with a grin, "How is he even still alive after all of that. It's simple, I'm not actually human."

Ranma let out a small annoyed sound, "Right, then what are you?"

"I'm an android, though I don't have nearly the capability to fight as you do since I was only sent as a messenger. The message I have come to give you is that it is still not too late."

"To what?" Ranma yelled through grit teeth, "Go back?"

The man grinned at his though it was not particularly pleasant, "That is what we were hoping. It would be a shame to have to kill you, agent, or any of the ones you care for."

The man with the braided hair looked back at the girl that was currently in front of everyone, "Akemi, you guys alright?"

She gave him a weak nod with a grin, "Yeah, just hurry and kick his ass so we can put the fire out and get this over with."

"I see," Ranma said as he looked back to the man, "So you will leave them alone if I go with you."

"You catch on quick," The thing said as it stared at him without blinking.

Ranma smiled and shook his head, "It's a nice offer but I think not, how do I know you will not hurt them after I'm gone?"

The man grinned and shrugged, "I guess that is the question. I take it that's your answer."

Ranma raised his hand in a clenched fist, "Yes."

With a sigh, the man turned and started to walk away, "My master will be... disappointed, Goodbye, Ranma Saotome. As a parting gift, this is all the information we have on you. That should help with your... problem."

Ranma caught the disk deftly from the air between his thumb and forefinger before looking at him. The man just shrugged as he slowly seemed to melt into the darkness of the surroundings and the fire that seemed to engulf their whole house disappeared to reveal only a hole with no indication of burning. Ranma turned in amazement and caught the look of everyone else as the others looked back at him in awe.

"Ranma, who was that?" Nabiki asked.

Akemi spoke while she removed some of the shards of glass and spoke in between small doses of pain from such an action, "He was the android messenger and double for our previous master. Normally he kills without hesitation if an agent deserts."

Ranma frowned, "Then what's with him giving this disk to me? I thought he was going to kill me, not help me."

"Maybe those were his orders," Nabiki said as she looked over Hitomi to make sure she was all right, "It seemed like he was trying to get you to rejoin them instead of kill you."

Akemi nodded, "Yes, I don't think he was supposed to kill you, that will probably be handled by another."

"He did not act evil," Hitomi said after her mother was done with her.

Ranma nodded in the distracted way of a person who was not listening fully to what someone was saying. The truth was that he wanted more to find out what was on the disk in his hands than to wonder why the man had shown up. He also should be going to bed so he could wake up early tomorrow and fix the wall that got destroyed.

"Well you guys should get some sleep," Ranma said as he turned to them, "We have a lot of things that will probably need to be done tomorrow."

Akemi nodded, "Yes, I agree with Ranma. We should all go to bed it has been a long day."


	4. 4th Book of Amnesia

Ranma 1/2

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Finished this finally, hope you enjoy it because I enjoyed writing it, next chapter is going to be an interesting. I have some things planned that are going to throw a twist into the story that may or may not work like I want it to. We'll have to see. Hope you all enjoy reading. Oh, and I own only the characters that I created, namely Hitomi, Kitsu, The Evil Man in Shadows(TM), and The Android Clone of the Evil Man in Shadows(TM)(All Rights Reserved)

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Remembrance

Chapter 4

He enjoyed the feeling of being able to lounge in bed and feel the sun shine like the warm nucleus of the earth on his face. Life was sustained by the giant ball of gas, helium and hydrogen molecules were all it contained. A giant sustained explosion that burned with enough heat to travel across space and warm the faces of millions of people across a small sized planet. This was not the most romantic way to think about the object, which would be thinking of actions you did while the sun was out, such as lay around on the sediment that held back the salt saturated water that engulfed seventy percent of the earth. Laying by the ocean with the sun in your face and just taking it easy with friends or loved ones, now that was the romantic way of thinking of the sun. Even having a picnic was a romantic way of thinking about the sun, but as long as you liked the feeling it did not matter how you thought of the big ball of fire. The fact that remained was that it would be too cold for the earth to sustain life without it. That alone was what made him feel good as rays of warmth cut through the folding blinds covering the window.

He would gladly just recline there the whole weekend if he had the chance but he supposed that he would have to get out of bed eventually. Still, he could just be lazy there until his partner next to him woke. After all that had happened the last few days he was more than deserving of a brake, at least that is what he convinced himself of. As he thought of this the person next to him shifted slightly so her head was lying on top of his left arm, both arms were presently folded behind his head. With a slight grin Ranma looked over at her and gently unfolded his left hand and placed it across her, causing her to unconsciously move closer to him. Even as cold as he had learned to be in his previous job, enough to leak through subconsciously to his normal attitude sometimes, he could still not resist a woman.

The woman sighed again and cracked open one eye, "Oh, hi Ranma, here I was having a nice dream and you go and wake me up."

"Well I should let you go back to sleep then," Ranma responded, he could here the small laugh ring in his voice, just a single joyful chuckle.

Nabiki sat up and stretched, letting her covers fall away from her chest, "That was the most joyful I've heard you since you came back. What's wrong?"

"Well how about your blanket and the fact that it's not covering you," Ranma said with his eyes covered.

The woman sighed with a resigned look, "Honestly Ranma, your in the same bed as me while I'm naked and you still have not gotten used to seeing me naked."

Ranma blinked behind his hand before he let it drop, "Yeah, that was pretty dumb, huh?"

Nabiki just sighed and shook her head, "Yeah, but that's par for the course here," Nabiki looked down at the blankets so her hair covered her eyes from the side view Ranma had of her, "for both of us sometimes."

The man noticed moisture fall in a neat round drop on the blankets right were he could imagine here eyes were, "I get this feeling that you're thinking about your sister, your younger sister."

"I miss her," Nabiki said softly as she brought her now clasped hands to her chest and started sobbing, "I'm so angry when I see her that I can't forgive her but then I miss her and I just can't sort my feeling out."

Ranma sighed, "I see."

With that Ranma got out of bed and sat at the edge, dressed only in an old pair of sweats that were lying around. He had to wonder how it was that Nabiki of all people had been the one to be left with all of his belongings. It was kind of strange but at the same time he was glad that she had held on to them. Looking down at his knees, Ranma took at deep breath and let it out slowly, he wanted to say something to Nabiki but there was just nothing that came to his mind.

"I already know I'm not smart," Ranma said softly, "Unless I'm fighting, in which case I prove to be a genius, everything I do is failure. I can't help you sole your problem, Nabiki. I haven't been here to see what went wrong, but I hate to see you cry at the same time. So this is the dilemma."

The woman looked at his, though she could not force a smile on her face if she wanted to she nodded, "Ranma, I don't expect you to solve my problems. That would be unfair, I just wish... I wish that I was as strong as you."

He looked over at her suddenly with something close to surprise in his eyes, "Like me? I'm not as strong as you think, sure physically I'm unmatched but you have more inner strength than I do, it's just that nobody showed you how to use it. You tap into it unconsciously for making deals," Ranma stood and started towards the shower room, "But since you have not been trained to use it you just accept that you are weak compared to me, so you let you defeat yourself. I'm going to take a shower."

Nabiki looked at him, shocked more than a little at what he had just told her, then hesitating at first then quickly she ran over to him and grabbed him,

"Ranma, if that is the case then you will teach me how to use it when I need it, if not for my sake then for the sake of my family!"

Ranma let out a lopsided grin, "If that's what you want."

"You bet your ass that's what I want," Nabiki all but yelled at him, "Now let's get started."

"You seem to have the wrong idea about this," Ranma said, "It's not something you can just do suddenly. We'll start training later tonight, for now let's just enjoy this day off."

This ended the conversation abruptly, at least for the time being, Ranma stood from his position at the edge of the bed and started walking towards the shower room. Once there he took a quick hot shower to relax his muscles and remove the dirt and sweat that had dried from the previous night. A lot had happened yesterday and he did not want to think about it right now, it was the weekend and he was free to do whatever he wanted. Of course doing what he wanted may very well be an illusion, he had others to think of and doing his own thing right now may be a little selfish. Of course he never thought there was anything wrong with thinking about you sometimes, now was not one of those times however.

Getting out of the shower and slipping on a white shirt and some loose jeans, Ranma walked downstairs slowly to find Akemi running out of the kitchen with a scream. Raising an eyebrow, the martial artist looked in the direction she had came from to find what looked to be a small white kitten perched on the counter licking its paws calmly. The man looked back at the girl with a grin and chuckled slightly.

"Scared of a kitten," He said as he walked up to it, "You should be ashamed of yourself."

Akemi grit her teeth and yelled back, "Shut up! That beast is evil, look at the thing, nothing that cute could be innocent."

Ranma blinked and stared at the cat thoughtfully, "There's something familiar about this cat."

Just as he was about to pick the animal up though he heard a gasp from behind him and turned to see Nabiki standing there with an angry look on her face. The angry look was not aimed at him however, it seemed to be aimed at the cat that sat in front of him with a total look of innocence on its face.

"I really don't understand what the fuss is over a stray cat," Ranma muttered. Just then Hitomi came in with a pot of boiling water and innocently stood next to Ranma and the cant, "Hey Akemi, is this how you wanted the water?"

The girl with multi-colored hair looked at the younger girl and sighed, "I said hot, not boiling, oh well, we'll just have to wait for it to cool off a little."

"Sorry," Hitomi set the pot down next to the cat on the counter and Ranma could have sworn he saw the animal give it a nervous glance for a second.

This was eventually written off as his imagination and he just shrugged and started out of the kitchen, "Oh well, I'm going to practice out back for a while."

With that he started out of the room but stopped as something occurred to him and he went back to move the boiling water. Hitomi was barely tall enough to reach the counter as it was and so she had not put it in the safest position.

Unfortunately when he grabbed it, he did not expect it to be as slick as it was and he watched as if in slow motion as the kettle fell on top of the cat that panicked and tried to get out of the way as fast as it could. It failed by just a hair, enough to keep from getting a serious burn but not enough to avoid getting wet. The reaction to the woman that took the cant's place was that of shock, anger, and horror.

Ranma folded his arms and looked curiously at the woman, "So, what are you doing here?"

The woman looked up in shock and blinked at him, "I..."

"She was probably spying on you," Akemi said from behind him, "I would not be surprised if she was from our syndicate, some kind of new agent."

Nabiki suddenly put on a mask of ice, "No, her name is Shampoo and she is not welcome."

The woman with purple hair looked at the Tendo sister with surprise, "I no I not so good in past," The woman said as she averted her gaze to the floor, "Not come here to make trouble, just want see Ranma. Is why not come as human."

Akemi looked at her then to Ranma who seemed to sigh in frustration, "She has an ability like you?"

"You mean changing her form with water," Ranma nodded, "Yes, it seems so."

"She's naked."

Ranma blinked and looked back at the stone faced Nabiki, "Huh?" He then looked back at the woman in front of him and felt quiet nervous suddenly, "Uh, well let me go get some clothes then."

Running up the stairs to grab something, anything, to cover the girl up, he left the three other females living in the house in an uncomfortable position of staring at a naked girl that was not at all welcome in the house. With a history like hers it was not exactly a surprise that she was treated as such, only two people in the house knew of her past and those two were the ones doing most of the seething. One of those people was upstairs frantically looking for some clothes and cursing and the other was just hiding her emotions behind a mask of ice. The woman that sat on the counter in the kitchen at least had the decency to look embarrassed and cover herself with her hands. Still, after the hell she had put her whole family through, Nabiki would not let her get away from her sins so easily. Walking up to the woman with a stern face she aimed a glare that could have killed the woman with purple hair had she noticed it at all.

"Shampoo, tell me the truth," Nabiki demanded, "And believe me, I know when you're lying, why are you here."

The purple haired girl was silent for a while, and Nabiki was about to drop the hammer on her when she finally spoke up, "Shampoo no longer Amazon, she is outcast for not bringing husband back. Shampoo not blame anyone but self though, is own fault, was hoping that... I could find some place to live. Come back to Japan to find everything changed and Shampoo get lost."

Ranma had come back downstairs with a long shirt he found laying around, white and buttoning down the front. He draped the shirt over the girl and she gingerly buttoned it up so she would be somewhat decent. She nodded her head once in the direction of the martial artist before she turned back to Nabiki.

"When Shampoo wondered by house, felt Ranma's aura and decided to come in window and look," The girl suddenly turned and leapt at Ranma so sudden he was unprepared and tumbled backwards with the girl on top of him, she started yelling at him with tears in her eyes, "Just wanted to see Ranma again! Is all

Shampoo intended, please believe! No can take more rejection, no can take hate from others, please no hate!"

Ranma looked helpless as she lay on top of him, "Shampoo..."

Nabiki looked at his position and sighed, "Ranma, you realize you're encouraging her, she will never get over you this way."

"I know, Biki-chan," Ranma looked down at the girl who was crying in his chest, "I want to help her but there is no guarantee that she will not see it as wanting a relationship."

Hitomi had been silently watching the whole ideal from the back and felt a little out of place now, still she felt for the woman. She did not totally understand what the story meant but it was obviously sad.

"Mom, we could let her stay just until she gets back on her feet," The little girl said as she spoke quietly, "She seems so sad."

Nabiki let her icy façade melt just a little, "Yeah, I guess you're right,

Shampoo could stay with us just for a little while, as if I don't have too many guests already. Damn it, I should start charging rent."

"See Shampoo, you can stay until you find a place for yourself," Ranma said, "I know that you are angry and sad but maybe you can heal here for a while."

The girl looked up at him and nodded, "Thank you, Ranma."

"Hey, don't thank me, thank my mistress," Ranma said with a wry grin.

"Don't talk about me like that!" Nabiki let her mask slip instantly, then she regained it with embarrassment, "I mean, um, yeah, I'm the one that owns the house."

Shampoo nodded and then stood and bowed low at the waist in Nabiki's direction, "Thank you very much for letting me live here until I get my own home."

"Why do I have the feeling I'll regret this," Nabiki muttered before she sighed, "stand up Shampoo, I will allow you to live in this house, but only until you get your own place."

"Thank you," The purple haired girl said.

Akemi shook her head, "Well, I guess you are an old friend, or old enemy, either way, don't try to start trouble or you'll have to deal with me."

"You is Ranma's sister?"

Ranma made a sour face before he burst out in a fit of laughter, Akemi ground her teeth together and clenched her fists at her side, "I am not his sister, I am my own person, and don't give me no crap about being related to that man. I'm only protecting him because he's going to need to survive to deal with me."

Shampoo crossed her hands in front of her chest before she nodded sagely, "Ah, see family resemblance, definitely sister... or cousin."

Even Nabiki had to smirk at this one, the ex-Amazon could be quiet the trouble maker but she was always entertaining. She always seemed to lighten the mood even when those around her were at their worst she could be cheerful. Part of it was because her Amazon pride would not let her show weakness in front of an enemy and part of it was because she hated seeing her friends hurt. At least that is what Nabiki had deduced it down to, of course all of that could be going totally out on a limb. Suddenly she remembered something.

"Hey Ranma, do you still have that disk?"

The man looked surprised and nodded as he reached for his back pocket, "Here, tell me you're not going to look at that on you day off."

She nodded, "Our day off is ruined now anyways, might as well see what's on this baby."

Without waiting for any chance to object, the woman ran up the stairs to her at home office room. She did not make heavy use of the room but it was obvious to all who entered that she was not the cleanest single mother ever. Papers littered the floor and desk and there was just enough room for the computer to be on the desk. It looked like someone had gone through the room looking for something important. All of it was from the woman in front of them working though.

Ranma watched from behind Nabiki as she sat down and inserted the disk and prayed as the machine clicked away at the digital media. Then after what seemed like forever the screen came up and he saw what he had been waiting so long to see. After all of this time, his memories were documented from his teenager years to the point until he disappeared. After that it seemed to be blank, it took about two or three hours to read all of it, and some of it was amazingly detailed, it was almost as if he had written it himself. Of course there was no almost about it, the last entry proved that this was exactly what happened.

_This is probably the last time I will be able to write here, tomorrow I disappear from my life and everyone I knew. I wish it had not come to this but it is my only way out, I came to realize, without hurting those around me. They may miss me but they will go on and nobody will get hurt. Should this find its way into their hands, then I never meant any of the harm that I caused to anyone. Please believe that this is the only way to go on. I'm sorry. Sincerely, _

_Ranma Saotome._

The martial artist seemed unnerved as he read the words that had been written upon the screen. The words were in his handwriting, every single word and page he had written about his life had been scanned and saved to a floppy disk. Every emotion and move he had ever thought to be important was here, every person or event. All of those things that he had forgotten were suddenly seeping into his brain from some locked away recess in a warehouse of the mind that had been almost gone. He started to shake and then slowly a low growl started from his throat, then it turned into an inhuman scream as his head flooded with the millions of images and emotions that he had forgotten over the years. He was holding his head and eyes bulging as if they were about to spring from his very skull, he screamed to the heavens.

Others looked on in concern but at the same time they were unsure of how safe it would have been to get too close to him. Then his aura flared around him in a dark blue miasma of fury and will, this only served to prove to the others that he was not to be approached. Eventually, after what seemed to be a longer time than it most likely actually was, the screaming and the aura stopped and the man fell limply to the floor. Nabiki gasped and ran to him as he lay on the floor.

His breathing was deep and his eyes were closed, he was unconscious but no other harm had come to him.

Akemi and Shampoo came up to look and make sure for themselves that nothing was seriously wrong. It was apparent that the sudden insurgence of memories had caused this state, that was evident on the surface. What was hard to see was what the man was going through inside his head. Swirling visions of confusion, pain, and anger assaulted his head, the feeling was new to him and the pain was nothing he could fight. The screaming had died down, leaving him breathing deeply and having trouble staying conscious. His eyes were heavy and blurry, a woman with brown hair smoothed his hair back from his face, and he felt her warm hand against his clammy head and smiled.

"Does it hurt?" She asked the question softly.

He would have let out a chuckle but his head hurt too much to allow that, "Just a little headache, I'm mostly tired."

She smiled slightly at him, "Yes, I can imagine, go ahead and sleep."

"I think I would have even without your permission," Ranma answered back weakly.

Nabiki felt tears in her eyes as she saw Ranma pass out finally, she did not know why but it felt as if he was leaving her again. She wanted to wake him up again but she knew that it would do no good, her only hope was that he was the same person she had met before. She knew that there was a chance that the old memories would bring back pictures of the woman that he had loved before he went away. If he remembered that, there was a chance that he might try to go back to her and that would be painful for Ranma and Nabiki both. Akane did not love Ranma anymore, she was married to Ryouga and they were happy with children.

There was no room for the martial artist with the braided ponytail in that equation. Akemi and Shampoo wisely decided to give the two of them some room, after helping to lift the unconscious man onto the couch, and left the room where the couple was.

**Elsewhere, in an ominously dark room with an ominously solid and huge desk and an equally ominous chair sat an ominous man. The man was lit from behind by a huge window overlooking a city that was not quite as ominous as his room. It also did not save on the budget like is office should this ever become an animated series... which it will not, however it had the same cheap effect. Many people were afraid of him with good reason but they would also, and he could prove this with tapes from hidden cameras, comment on how his office was actually pretty cliché. He was fine with that really, he did not like light anyways and that was the real reason his office was like this. The man could really give two shits about what people thought about his office, he liked it like this. He was not trying to keep his identity a secret, he just wanted to be comfortable and people treated it as if it was some sort of evil lair. Bah!**

**The door let out a bang suddenly as someone knocked on it and it echoed through the almost empty room, free of any frivolous furniture, and he pushed a button on his desk to let the man on the other side in. There stood a person that made him feel like he was looking into a magic mirror that transported him back in time to when he was about fifty years younger. Of course this was not the case, it was just an android representation of him. The old man turned his back on the fake man to look out the window.**

**"What was his response?"**

**The android sighed and shook his head, "He is stubborn."**

**With a chuckle the old man spoke again, "Yes he is, I had a feeling he would keep his current path. I will send Kitsu to deal with him. The boy has wanted another go at that man for a while. If he is defeated, I want you to take the agents life. Do not bother with anyone else, the others are of no concern. Also, capture that woman of his and bring her here, I have another experiment I wish to try out and from what our surveillance can tell she is a perfect candidate."**

**The man bowed, "I really wish it did not have to be this way."**

**Turning suddenly the old man slammed his hand on the desk, "If we all got what we wished for then this world would be perfect, wouldn't it! Now go get Kitsu and do your damn job!"**

**With the yelling done the fake man bowed silently and left the room, the old man was alone once again, "Damn I hate that man, he's too soft, but he had better do as I say or he will do more than just kill the Saotome man."**

To say that Nabiki awoke in an uncomfortable position would have been the understatement of a lifetime. It was not that she awoke unpleasantly, in fact it was quiet gentle with a big warm hand brushing some of her hair from her face and cupping her small face in its overgrown mass. The reason for her being uncomfortable was that she was twisted so her face was in the opposite direction of the rest of her body. Her legs were twisted at an angle so her right leg was under her left curled up under her body for support. They did not so much point down the length of the couch as much as away. Nabiki's neck was bent so that her right cheek lay on the chest of the man who was stretched out quite comfortably on his back with his feet pointed down the couch.

The woman looked up with startled wide eyes and blinked a few times as if she was not sure where she was. Ranma chuckled and helped her get off the ground after he took a sitting position on the couch. She thanked him and tried to turn her neck back to its normal position but winced as she did. Ranma sighed and took a hold of the woman's neck and gently started rubbing with his thumbs in a circular motion. He could feel the muscles become less tense as he focused a little of his warm, calming, energy into them. She moaned and closed her eyes as he continued to massage her neck.

"How you doing, beautiful?" Ranma asked as she leaned back into him.

Nabiki was lost in her own world as she heard the man speak to her so it took her a second to respond to his inquiry, "I was a little worried."

Ranma nodded silently behind her, "I see, and why was this?"

"Well, I saw you in so much pain and I thought… I don't know what I thought but I was concerned," even to Nabiki that sounded lame but she continued with a question of her own, "Do you still feel the same about me?"

"So that's what this is about," Ranma paused in his massage just enough to wrap his arms around her waist and pull her close to him, "I don't think you have to worry about me going back to Akane."

Nabiki felt herself melt into his warm body as she was pulled close, "I was just afraid that when you're memories came back…"

Ranma let a low rumbling chuckle come from his throat, "I'll let you in on a little secret that only me and Akane knew. We grew apart from each other towards the end. After the thing with Saffron it just got too weird for either of us to make it work. We agreed to see others but we still had to keep it a secret from the family, it would have worked fine to except for my part did not go as smooth as hers. She started seeing Ryouga back then and I…"

Ranma paused and sighed tiredly, not as if he wanted to go to sleep as if he was remembering something he really did not want to. Nabiki blinked and looked up at him the best she could from her position. Ranma did not want to continue obviously, and had this been some other situation she would have been fine with letting it go but she wanted to know what happened next, for her own sanity.

"You what?"

Ranma tightened his grip on her slightly, "I fell in love with you, but I could not let it be known because everyone would have flipped. Everything we, me and Akane, had worked to build into our version of normal would have been totally destroyed. And if we started going out back then you would have been in danger every day."

"That's true, I can't really argue with your reasoning," Nabiki concluded as she looked forward again, still thinking of the one question that remained, "But why did you run away?"

Ranma sighed, "That's a little harder to explain, the short truth is that I just could not bear being next to the person I loved and not being able to tell them. So I ran away because I couldn't show you my love, Nabiki."

He felt Nabiki jump in his arms as he made that last confession and let a smile creep onto his face. It was a rare occasion that he of all people was able to surprise the woman that presently occupied his arms. He was glad that she was interested in someone like him, sure he was good at martial arts but it mattered little if the girl he loved thought of him as a halfwit.

"But why would you just run away without thinking of the others? I mean it was pretty selfish of you to just leave one day."

"I know, but I had to leave and at the time I thought it was best to spare you the pain of seeing me go," Ranma sighed again, "But had I thought about it a little more I would have realized that you would have been hurt even more by me not saying goodbye. I knew you would think that you did something wrong, we already talked about this. What I didn't think was that you would feel the same way about me, you were always so sharp, you still are, I figured you would despise some idiot like me."

He could not see her face from the angle he was but he could imagine by her sudden tensing that she was struggling with her anger, "So you proved beyond and doubt that you were an idiot and ran away from your problems. You make it so easy to be angry with you Ranma. But at the same time, I can't say I really blame you too much, your life was full of unfair decisions."

"I don't feel good about it," Ranma said, "I felt like crap for the first year. That's why I went to the company, it was my own punishment, something I would be ashamed of for the rest of my life. I had to suffer for my weakness."

Nabiki shifted in his arms until she was sitting sideways on his lap and looking into his face. It looked as if the woman was about to break into tears as she gazed into his face. To his surprise she leaned forward and put her face in his chest.

From this position, her voice muffled by his own mass, she spoke, "We all suffered from your decision then. I never want anyone to suffer like that again, please don't leave again."

Ranma nodded, "If that's what you want then I won't."

The woman smiled and looked up at him, "Good, I know you're a man of your word. Now can you teach me how to use my will like you were saying you were going to."

The man chuckled, "I may regret this but okay, we had better go to a better place than this. Do you have a place you find relaxing?"

The woman thought about this a second before she answered, "Well there is this place in the park that has always made me feel at ease. It's out of the way of everyone too."

Ranma nodded, "Well we should probably start there then. Should we bring Hitomi with us?"

Nabiki nodded, "I don't see how it could really hurt, and this isn't going to be anything embarrassing after all."

He shook his head, "No, all we're going to do is find your center and teach you to use it."

"Okay," Nabiki jumped up and called out loudly, "Hitomi!"

A tired voice came from upstairs and descended with the movement of the girl in question, "Yeah?"

"We're going to the park, get dressed," Nabiki said.

The girl smiled big at that, "Okay, can the woman with the weird hair come too?"

This caused Nabiki to blink, "Uh, sure, and her name is Akemi, Hitomi."

"What makes you think I want to come to the park with you," Akemi grumbled sleepily from the top of the stairs, "I was having a nap and you interrupt it for some time in some stupid park? Bah!"

Ranma grinned and shook his head, yeah, just like someone he used to know, "You sure? I mean I'd hate for you to miss the fun just because of you're stubbornness."

"I'm not stubborn," Akemi growled, "Fine, I'll come with you, but I'm not going to have fun."

Ranma snorted at that and laughed, "No skin off my back."

Nabiki leaned close and whispered in his ear, "I guess you know how to deal with someone who's stubborn."

"Why not," He countered, "I mean I have myself as such a good example."

"No arguing with that," Nabiki agreed, "Alright, lets get ready to go."


	5. 5th Book of Amnesia

Ranma 1/2

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On to Chapter 5, all characters not made up by me, belonging to the Ranma ½ cast, are not property of me. I do not own so I do not expect to gain in any way from using them in this story. This is just an innocent fan fiction. And now without further ado, the next chapter.

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Remembrance

Chapter 5 (v. 2)

She was not sure how long it had been since they hard started, she had been working so long and hard that days passed to quickly to count. She knew that it had been a while but she had ceased to thing about the time that past between their sessions. At present the two of them were sitting side by side and in deep concentration over something, their eyes closed and legs crossed in a lotus position on the floor. Ranma was glowing with a frost blue aura that seemed to engulf the surroundings with its touch. Nabiki on the other hand was only barely outlined by such an aura, though at least it had appeared, which was more than could previous attempts accomplished. The slight aura had appeared a couple days ago and she had since been working on solidifying it into something usable. She had no idea how long she had been at it, and this usually happened when the two of them practiced like this. She could feel the sweat running down her body from maintaining her aura for so long, and she knew that she would be hungry when they were done.

They had been coming to the park for days now and each time, Hitomi followed them and played with a black haired boy that seemed to be by himself a lot. Nabiki could feel her mind start to get hazy, proof that she would lose control of her aura soon. Before this happened, Ranma had said she had to hold it until control was nearly lost then attempt to form it into a ball in her hands. So concentrating with the last of her energy she formed the image of a ball in her hands and started to feel the energy around her flow down to her hand. Just before she lost all control she felt the start of the ball, not perfectly round but it was close enough that she was proud of herself.

"Good job," She heard Ranma say as she lost control fully and her aura faded, "You can hold it as long as me now, a little longer and I can work on getting it more powerful."

Nabiki sighed, "Thanks, we had better get Hitomi and get something to eat, I'm hungry and tired."

Ranma laughed, "Doing this for a while does tend to wear a person out, sit there and I'll get her for you."

Nabiki nodded, "Okay, you might have to carry me home too, just so you know."

"In that case we'll take a cab," Ranma said with a groan, "I'd probably just end up dropping you."

"Weakling," Nabiki snorted playfully, "go find Hitomi."

Of course all of this was said in the tone of someone who does not really mean it but Ranma secretly felt a blow to his pride. Of course sometimes his pride needed a good beat down because it got the better of him so he did not say anything of it. Silently he walked off and looked for the little girl with long strait brown hair that was probably playing with the same lonely boy of her age that she had been for the last few days they had come here. Walking through the park he spotted her doing what he had suspected she would be doing, with one exception. Next to the little boy stood two adults that he knew very well, though he would just as soon not have seen them right now.

Walking up to Hitomi he waved, "How's it going, you having fun?"

The girl looked up at him and shrugged, "Yeah."

"He Ranma," Ryouga said with a slightly unfriendly undertone that was lost on not one person there, "What a surprise."

The man with the braided ponytail nodded in response, "Ryouga, Akane, doing good I take it."

"Ranma, who was over there with you, that aura feels familiar," Akane asked in a quizzical tone.

"Well it should," The man said idly as he grabbed Hitomi's hand, "It's your sister's aura. Say goodbye, Hitomi, it's time to go."

"Bye," Hitomi said waving as she turned with the older man.

The young boy waved goodbye silently but it was interrupted by Akane, "Don't try to kid me, her aura isn't that strong. Who was it?"

"I told you, it's your sister's," Ranma said as he continued to walk away, "We've been practicing here for the last few days. I taught her how to manifest an aura, your father taught her well in everything else."

"Ranma!" Ryouga yelled, "Don't ignore us."

The man was even farther away now, "I'm not, we have to get back before we get too exhausted. Bye."

He walked off before the two of them could make any attempt to say anything else to him. The man was tired enough without having to deal with the two of them putting him through the ringer about things he had not part in. Besides, Nabiki would be waiting for him to get back so he had better hurry before she got mad. He walked through some trees and back to the clearing where the two of them had been practicing, only to find a surprise that was not pleasant in the least but he could not really say that it was all that surprising.

"Hey generic evil guys sent by your master to capture the female I care about and make me bend to your will," Ranma said tiredly, "This will go a lot easier if you let her go you know."

"Sorry, Ranma," Nabiki said from her place tied up next to one of the henchmen, "I couldn't do anything."

The man shrugged and slid into a fighting stance, "Nothing to be sorry about, it happens to the best of them," he addressed the two men, "I'll say this one last time, let her go or I will be forced to deal with you myself."

The men were silent but one got into his own stance and matched Ranma's gaze with his own unnerving one. Before the martial artist could react, one of the men took off running with Nabiki while the other stayed and charged him. Torn between following and fighting, and being tired on top of it all, the man went on the defensive quickly. Then another unexpected turn came and the man lunged at the nearby Hitomi. Ranma jumped in front of her and felt something long and sharp pierce his body. A spray of blood shot out and at first he though it was paint until he looked down and saw a sword sticking out of his stomach. Then he coughed and tasted something slightly metallic in his mouth.

He lost his balance and felt his body hit the floor heavily, his vision was sideways, and he could see the horrified look on the little girl's face that he had protected. This was all wrong, he knew that it was wrong, something had to be fake about this, and he had to move. He had to do something, but he body refused to move and just as his vision faded he saw two pairs of legs run past him, then everything was black.

**"So you got the girl," The voice of the old man said over the phone, "Good, bring her here. I have something special planned for her. And don't worry, even if he did die he will climb from the depths of hell to get to her, and then we will have him and a new weapon in one motion."**

**He slowly hung up the phone and a smile came to his mouth, a smile that slowly built into a fit of evil laughter that should probably have a trademark on it. Then he calmed down, despite being called evil he did not see it as evil, it was more like try to keep a business going. He was a working man and Saotome could ruin everything if he leaked the real intentions of the company. The woman would be experimented on, then her memory would be totally wiped, her cells cloned then she would be disposed of. She would take care of Saotome and he would gain in business. It was perfect, but he still did not want to jinx it by saying nothing could go wrong, he did not get where he was by being lax.**

"I think he's coming around," It was a male voice that he heard then, "I'll make sure to restrain him if he tries something."

Another voice, female, came from some distance away, "Yes, he is in no condition to run off so hold him down. The patient is known to try and run off suddenly when excited."

He opened his eyes, they felt sticky, and his vision was tinted red, somehow he knew that this was blood. He remembered what happened, but why was there blood on his face? A man with black short hair wearing a mask was standing over him, his front stained thickly with blood. In the back of his head, the man registered that this was a doctor. In his hand was a scalpel that was also covered in blood.

"Nurse, get the gas, we have to put him to sleep before he recovers fully," The doctor said gravely, "Just relax, Mr. Saotome, we need to finish so you can recover from the wound. Truthfully, you should be glad you're not dead."

The man closed his eyes and nodded, he let the mask slip over his face and was gradually overcome by darkness. In the darkness he saw visions of peace that slowly turned to horror. Whether this was a vision of the future or not he did not know, but what he saw he certainly did not want to come to pass. It started out with a sun filled day, pleasant temperature, and birds singing. The usual happy day set up so to speak, then he saw Hitomi running and playing happily with other kids. Smiling he looked over at the woman at his side, but something was wrong. He saw Nabiki but she was different, he could not see how she was different because the image was blurry, but he knew something was not right. He closed his eyes and opened them but the same image greeted him, and extended a clawed hand towards his chest. Every attempt he made to stop it was thwarted and just before the claw pierced his heart, he awoke again.

"He has awoken again," A female voice said, "will it be okay to leave him."

The doctor nodded, "Yes, the surgery was a success and he is too sedated and has lost too much blood to be of any trouble."

Ranma tried to open his mouth but found the doctor was right, he was too weak to even form a coherent word. With an angry sigh he conceded to just lay there and let himself be overtaken by the sedative. When he woke some time later he found someone sitting over him and running their hands through his hair. The white ribbon gave away the identity of the person right away.

"Ran-chan, you're a mess," the woman said as she sighed, "I only wish that I was there to fight with you. This never would have happened."

He tried to speak again but only a mumble came out, "…"

"Heh, you were probably trying to say something comforting," The woman acknowledged, "The doctor said it would be a while before you gained full movement back. The cut was very precise, luckily, patching you up was very easy. He said you would be out in about a week or two. If you let yourself heal that is."

Ranma sighed, "…"

Ukyo smiled, "Yeah, we're all worried about her, the guy fighting you ran off when Ryouga and Akane showed up and even though Ryouga chased after them, they both escaped."

Many thoughts and feelings went through him but the most dominant was anger at himself. For him to be defeated that easily was inexcusable, he should never have been fooled by that trick. Granted he was weak but that is still no excuse for letting them taking Nabiki. He felt his face soften and he closed his eyes and accepted the oblivion that overtook him. Thoughts of revenge on his mind.

Waking up a while later he found two people in his view this time, one a woman with a short dark hair that went down to her neckline. The other was a man with long black hair that went down his back and gave him the distinct look of having a mullet, the yellow headband with black spots did not help this look in any way. They were both looking over him, he could only assume that the two kids by their side were their kids.

"Hey, Ranma," Ryouga said, "You look like crap man. Sorry I couldn't get Nabiki back for you. I guess I was just too slow."

Akane looked over at her husband and then back to him, "You really are a trouble magnet. Thanks for protecting Hitomi though, we'll continue to search for any clues while you're in the hospital. Just relax and get better."

Ranma groaned and this time managed to weakly utter, "Thanks for trying to help, both of you. I have shamed myself by letting this happen, take care of Hitomi while I'm here."

"You don't have to worry about her," Ryouga said with a chuckle, "She never stopped believing you would get better."

There was a pause before Ranma spoke again, "Hey, I just thought I would let you know that I got my memories back. Even if it was a weird way, thanks for helping me through the hard times. Both of you have helped me so much."

Akane placed a hand softly on his chest and said, "Ranma, we both knew the relationship was coming to an end. I still wanted, I still want to be friends with you even if I was angry at you for leaving. I want to have a nice talk with my sister when this is all over too."

"Yeah, I want you two to talk too," Ranma muttered before he closed his eyes once more, "I'm sorry to all of you."

Those were the last words before he again collapsed into a sleeping state brought on by the many pain killers and fluids draining into his body. He would not wake up again for a week and a half. When he did, no one came to see him but he did not have time to think about that. He was more worried about finding Nabiki and so he worked on rehabilitating his muscles and making everything move like it should have. Once he was released by the doctor he rushed out of the hospital and ran as fast as he could, which while not his peak was still incredibly fast, towards where Akane worked. He did not know were she lived so he would start by going to the police station and asking around. Still it proved harder than he thought to get the information out of the people who worked their, but he finally learned she lived very close to Nabiki. With this being the case it did not take long for him to find the house, but the reception was not expected on their part.

He knocked on the door without hesitation, impatience clear in every stick of his knuckles against the heavy grain door. They would have the best clue as to where to start looking, while they chased the two guys they should have left some sort of trail. He just needed to find out where the trail started so he could begin. He knocked again even louder, his mind not registering that it was late in the evening and the two of them were probably in bed by now. The second time he knocked he waited a while and finally the door opened to show a tired and very irritated looking Ryouga in a robe.

"Ranma, I know you want to find Nabiki but it's late," Ryouga said before he even had a chance to speak, "If you want you can sleep over, the couch is open, but don't think for a second we're going to drop everything to find Nabiki."

The man looked appropriately ashamed of his actions and sighed, "Sorry, I just got released. You're right, we need to form a plan and we can do that better tomorrow. Is Hitomi awake?"

The man shook his head, "She's probably asleep by now. I'll get a blanket and pillow for you."

The man entered the house, "Thanks."

"No problem," Ryouga responded, "Be back in a minute."

Ranma nodded and looked around at the house, it was not a very impressive set up, but then he supposed they probably did not make much money. They seemed happy enough, but the house was just so plain looking that it threw him off. He had been in training halls all his life and they were always grand and decorated brilliantly. In contrast the house was almost snug and had a feel of not suffocating but more like being cozy. It was a nice place in its own way but he would have expected them to be living in a slightly bigger place.

"We both work normal jobs," Ryouga said as he walked in and noticed Ranma looking around, "well, moderately normal. I work as a fitness instructor and you already know what Akane works as."

The man chuckled and shook his head with amusement, "Yeah, can't really forget. It's a nice place, though not a training hall, but nice in its own way. I like it."

Ryouga let a half smile play across his face, "Thanks, we try. Here you go."

"Thanks, see you in the morning," Ranma turned and headed for the couch.

"Yeah, tomorrow we'll definitely find her," Ryouga said with determination, "Sleep well."

Sleeping was the only option Ranma's body would really allow, slowly his eyes closed and he drifted off into darkness. He dreamt again of the dream of a devil woman with razor claws coming for him and taking his life. Again she was familiar and again he could do nothing but watch in horror as he saw the claws move towards his heart. Then he woke at the last moment to see the light of morning assaulting his eyes with brightness contrary to the dark vision of his dream. He sat up with a groan and rotated his shoulder muscles to loosen them a little, drawing an unusually loud pop from the joint as he did so. Those guys he had fought had done a number on his body, besides running him through with the sword, he had a dislocated shoulder and some cracked ribs. It would take a while before his body was back up to par. Leaning forward and straitening his legs, Ranma grabbed the ends of his feet and felt his lower back stretch out. With this done he swung his legs around and let them hang off the side of the couch before bracing his hands on his knees and standing up.

Taking a large breath, he took the fresh air in and let his lungs take in the fresh clean air and circulate through his body before he let the breath out. Closing his eyes he let his senses relax themselves and he could hear everything around him, he felt the air caress his body he smelled the flowers, the trees, and even the early morning smell of breakfast. Walking towards the kitchen he found Ryouga standing over a stove and flipping what looked to be eggs on the grill and chopping them with speed and precision.

"Hey man, what're you doing?" The man asked as he looked at the concoction on the stove.

"Well I learned it while I traveled around," the man said as he continued to look at the stove, "They called it scrambled eggs. Tastes pretty good actually."

Ranma laughed, "So why this and not the traditional meal?"

"Because there's a lot of protein in these things," Ryouga said seriously, "You need that to help the tissue that was damaged heal right. Since I know you well enough to know that you won't stay inactive long enough for them to heal right."

The man with the pig-tail looked up at the ceiling, "You know as well as I do that I don't have that option. I don't know what they took Nabiki for but I know that it isn't good."

Ryouga nodded flipped the egg concoction into a pan from the flat grill and turned to him with the eggs in hand, "Even if she wasn't in trouble you couldn't let yourself heal. I seriously worried that one day you'll go too far."

"Feh, like that'll ever happen," Ranma said with a cocky smirk, "I'm still young enough to take a beating."

"That is not what I'm talking about," Ryouga said as he started to divide the meal up between three plates, "Forget it, I don't want to talk about this right now."

"Right, for now lets eat," Ranma said just as Akane came down, her dark hair still damp from bathing.

"Hey, you two, how's it going?" The woman asked as she saw the two hanging out in the kitchen.

"Morning, 'Kane," Ranma greeted easily, "How you feelin'?"

Ryouga raised an eyebrow at the casualness of the greeting, "That was a little too casual."

Akane was also taken back by the greeting, "I'm doing fine."

"Good, let's eat, we have some work to do and little time to do it," Ranma said quickly as he sat down at the table and waited for everyone else to sit down.

The meal went quickly and they spent the time afterwards cleaning up the table and discussing how the find where they had taken Nabiki. None of them had any clue to where they had taken the woman and there was no way as far as anyone knew to find out. The more they tried to figure out what to do the more they felt irritation and despair at their own lack of information. It was suggested that they go to the park where she had been captured and try to look for clues there but when it was found out that that had already been done it was thrown out the window.

"This can't be all, there has to be some kind of lead," Ranma let out an angry sigh, "What are we missing."

There was a nock on the door suddenly and when Akane answered she found the surprise of a lifetime standing there. A woman wearing a white ribbon in her long brown hair and an okonomiyaki chef's outfit was standing at the entrance. She looked like she was out of breath and there were a few cuts in her outfit. When the door answered she left no time for acknowledgement, she just grabbed the girl with short hair by the lapels of her dress as if her life depended on it.

"Nabiki, I found where she is," Ukyo said with urgency but still tired from whatever it was she had been doing, "She's in trouble, we have to hurry."

Akane broke free of the woman's grip and helped her over the couch to let her sit down, "You need to rest, tell us where she is."

"An old building on the edge of town near the pier, a warehouse," Ukyo tried to get up again but was gently restrained, "Get me a map."

Ryouga nodded and ran off as Ranma stared at the woman, "So how did you find out where she was? And why are you telling us for that matter?"

"I heard you got hurt and when I found out the story from Akane I wanted to help you," The woman said as she let herself sink into the couch, "I know it goes against myself, but then again, there's no real way I can get together with you anymore."

"Really," Ranma said, "So I just believe your story and get ambushed by the people who paid you off and swore they wouldn't hurt me, correct?"

The woman's face went pale at this as she stared wide eyed at him, "What?"

"I was hoping you would deny that," Ranma said as he sighed, "But judging by the look on your face I didn't get so lucky. Oh well."

Akane looked at Ukyo as if she was about to kill the girl, "So you would endanger my sister and our lives by doing this. All because you're still in love with a boy from childhood."

"No, I-."

Ranma interrupted her speech, "So the deal is that you lead us there and they capture me? How dumb can you be, these people are trying to kill me. They don't want me alive! So you put those rips in your cloths, scrape yourself up and come to me expecting some sympathy! You disgust me."

"That's not how it was," Ukyo felt desperate suddenly and she leaned forward on the couch, "I really tried to get her out by myself, but they caught me and said they would keep me alive as long as I went along with them, I was going to say no until they told me they would also kill Nabiki."

Ranma nodded, "Why should I believe you now?"

"Why would I lie to you, Ran-chan?" Ukyo was in tears now, "I wanted to help you I swear. You don't understand how powerful these people are."

Ryouga walked in the room with a map and laid it down on the table in front of the woman, "Here you go."

Ukyo looked up at the man and then at the map, she raised a finger and pointed to an area at the edge of the city, "Here, she's in that building, I'm telling the truth."

Ryouga blinked and looked at Ranma, "I missed something, didn't I."

The other male martial artist looked at the girl pointedly, "Look, I don't blame you, I was angry. We'll talk about this later, just relax here and catch your breath. Let's go, we have a lot of time to catch up on."

It took a few minutes for the three who were part of the rescue squad to prepare for the upcoming battle. It had been a while since they had tried to fight seriously, but they all still practiced whenever they could. Not like they had in the old days, that was when everything was a lot simpler to figure out and the pressure of growing up did not threaten them as it did now. When everyone was ready they all walked out the gate towards the place that was said to be holding the woman they were trying to rescue.

When they arrived the place was, for all intensive purposes, abandoned looking as it should have been. To those on the outside it would look like an abandoned factory, that was the ruse that had kept it a secret for so long. The downfall of this was that security had to be light in order to keep it a secret. Any guards roaming around the outside of the building would cause immediate suspicion to rise. Knowing this meant that you could walk right in through the front gate without anyone to stop you. Not that they really cared as there was nothing in the factory, in actuality it was all built underneath the factory as the three eventually found out. There was a few minutes were they thought they had been tricked until an accidental kick sent an old industrial shelf in the factory, all planks and metal struts, falling with a large dusty crash to the ground. This in turn flipped a piece of metal from another smaller shelf that got destroyed into a wall. This wall just happened to be where the secret switch that no one knew about was hidden and the floor slid open some distance in front of them, letting some of the debris fall into it and probably alert security if they had not been alerted already, and causing all who looked on to sweat in nervous amazement.

"Ryouga," Ranma said after some silence.

"Yeah."

Ranma turned stiffly to the man and said almost mechanically, "Never touch anything here again."

"But-."

"Never."

The man nodded, "Alright."

"We should probably be careful," Akane said to the two of them, "From here on out they most likely know we're here."  
"Yeah, I agree," Ranma nodded his head at her words, "Now let's go."

With that the three of them descended the steps to the secret base and left the now destroyed factory behind them. As they stepped down the stairs the three of them noticed that the stairs only took up about one fifth of the opening. Most likely it was used to transport in bigger objects, though what exactly those were was not indicated. Deeper in it was dimly lit with dusty corridors and walls made of cold metal that seemed as if they had not felt life in decades, maybe even millennia. It was long and with the dimness they could just barely see in front of them, Akane kept a tight hold on Ryouga because, even though he had gotten better about it, she was still concerned about him wondering off somewhere and starting trouble trying to find them again. They were silent the whole way, there was not much in the atmosphere to induce a need to converse. An undetermined amount of time, because nobody had an instrument to measure time, they emerged into a corridor that was well lit and seemed a little less lifeless.

"It feels like we're close," Ranma said quietly, "I don't know why but I just have this feeling."

Akane looked around, "This place is a maze, and there aren't even labels to mark the right path."

Ryouga shrugged and looked around for a second before he disappeared around a corner, much to his companions' surprise, and after a short sound of scuffling came back with what looked to be a guard. Ranma sighed and shook his head before shrugging and walking up to the man to give him a good talking to.

"Ryouga, what are you doing?"

"Getting information," The man said as he turned back to the frightened guard, "Now tell us where the woman is."

"What woman?"

The man responded by balling his hand into a fist and yelling in the man's face, "Don't play dumb with me, where did you take her."

"I don't know what you're talking about! Please don't hurt me."

Ranma place a hand on the bandana clad man's shoulder and spoke softly, "Maybe you should tell him who we're looking for before you yell at him.

"That's bull!" Ryouga yelled, causing everyone to look at him in uncomfortable silence, "He should be able to read my mind."

"Ryouga, are you feeling okay, man?" Ranma asked with concern.

The man paused and took a breath, "Yeah, I just let my anger get a hold of me, now you," he addressed the guard again, "Tell us where the woman, Nabiki Tendo, was taken."

The guard nodded in sudden understanding, "Oh, I don't know what her name is but I saw them bring an unconscious woman in earlier. She's being kept a little down the hall. Unfortunately the six inch steel door can not be opened by my access. Not that I would do so for you if I could."

"Just lead us to the door," Ranma said idly, "We'll do the rest, and if you don't lead us to the door, well, let's just say you won't be walking right for a while."

The guard let out a gulp and nodded, "Alright, follow me."

All three of them followed the guard, though with a sense of uneasiness about them, it had been way to easy so far. The metal walls, clean as they were, seemed to hide something evil just behind them. Whatever the feeling was all three of them were sure that they would have to continue on, it had already been too long since Nabiki had been captured and that alone was cause for concern. Now it was just too hard for them to take their time about this, they had no plan for getting in but there was no way around that. Right now the only thing they could do was find the woman they were looking for and free her from whatever she was going through. So they followed the guard towards the wall and knocked him out once they arrived.

"You ready?" Ranma asked as he turned to the other two.

Ryouga nodded, "Yeah, here I go."

With that he placed a single finger against the wall and with a flash it collapsed in a hole big enough for an elephant to walk through. There were surprised to find that there were no guards on the other side, and in front of them sat a tank with the woman they were looking for on the inside, naked. Ranma ran up to it and without hesitation used every ounce of strength he had to break the clear glass on the outside, causing a rush of green fluid to come rolling out. The man leapt up and caught the woman in his arms and gently landed on the ground with her in his arms.

"She's alive," The man said, "just unconscious. We had better get out of here before we draw attention."

Akane walked up to him, "We should cover her."

The pigtailed martial artist nodded and handed her to Ryouga while he removed his shirt, which still had bandages under it from his earlier wounds. The shirt was placed over the woman, as big as it was, it covered her like a short dress. Ranma took the woman from the bandana clad man and the three of them made their way out of the room. As they started down the last corridor, the woman suddenly stirred in the man's arms, causing him to look down in surprise. It was then her eyes shot opened and she leapt out free of his grasp.

"Nabiki!" Akane gasped.

The woman did not seem to notice, she looked around quickly before fell to the floor and started to writhe around in what seemed to be a great amount of pain. Ranma was about to go forward to see what was wrong when she stood again and revealed something that nobody expected. Her once brown eyes were now yellow and cat-like, her hair had a slight red tint to it and there was a pair of horns, about six inches long and swooping forward on her head. A thin tail, tinted purple, swished back and forth behind her and her raised hands now had long thin claws, as did her bare feet.

"What the hell," Ryouga gasped, "This is screwed up right here."

Ranma was gritting his teeth, "Those bastards, what did they do to her.

"Nabiki!" Akane yelled, "Snap out of it, we're friends."

The woman howled like a beast, surely no human could emit such a sound from their throat, and rushed at Akane. The dark haired woman just managed to leap out of the way before a claw split her apart like an over ripe fruit. The newly formed demon woman howled again and charged, only to be stopped as Ranma leapt out in front of her and tackled her to the ground.

"I can't fight you Nabiki!" The man yelled, "You have got to control this before you hurt someone."

All he got in response was more thrashing, growling, and howling from the woman as she tried to free herself. With a sudden lurch she threw the martial artist into the air, leaping after him as she did so. He managed to block the next blow and lock her arms up so she could not move around, causing her to start thrashing again.

"What is it going to take to stop you?" Ranma yelled, "Give me some idea, I don't want you hurt, and I don't want you to hurt others."

Ryouga clenched his fist, "Forget it Ranma, you have to take her out before she hurts someone."

The martial arts shook his head, "I can't."

There was a moment then were he loosened his grip on the devil and she broke free once again. Ranma dodged her next kicking attack but would not bring himself to hit her, she was dangerous now but she was still the woman he loved somewhere under all of that. He tried to grab her again but she slipped away and this time he was unable to escape the next claw attack from her hand, though it just graze him, it was enough to send blood flying. The martial artist recoiled and put a hand to the wound on his chest to stop the flow of blood. When he looked up again he saw that the look on the woman's face had changed, the eyes were no longer yellow and cat like. He also noticed that some of his blood had gotten on her face and she had wiped some of it off and was staring at it with her brown eyes.

"Nabiki," He could hear the hope in his voice.

She looked up at him, "I… What's going on?"

Akane and Ryouga had been watching the whole thing and felt some of their tension fade away. Ryouga was glad that he had been wrong about her being able to change back. The two of them hesitantly walked towards where Ranma was standing to see if he was alright.

"I glad you came back to yourself," Ranma said in relief.

"What do you mean, Ranma," Nabiki looked at the blood on her clawed hand and back at the wound on the man's chest, "Did I hurt you? Ranma what happened?"

Ryouga held a hand up, "They did something to you, we don't know what it was but you were changed. Don't worry, you are changing back to normal as we speak."

Indeed her clawed hands had now changed back to normal along with her feet, and her tail was and horns were starting to disappear. Nabiki but her head in her hands as she felt tears form in her eyes. She had hurt the man she loved, and somehow not being in control of herself when it happened made it worse. Did they not realize that she could change into that creature at anytime and start to hurt people again.

"I can help you," Ranma said as he walked towards her, "I know you're scared, but you're also lucky that I trained you before you got captured. It will take developing the power of your will to gain control of the demon."

Nabiki looked at him not even trying to stop the tears, "But what if it doesn't work?"

Ranma chuckled, "Look at you with the questions. Don't worry, it will. Do you trust me?"

There was a moment where she just stared at him, the tears in her eyes finally drying, "Yes," she said at length.

"Good," Ranma said as he picked her up in his arms, "Don't worry, the wounds already healing, now let's go home."

"I would like that," The woman said as she felt weak suddenly and closed her eyes as she drifted off to sleep against his shoulder.

With that the four of them walked off out of the base, unaware of a very angry evil-plotting-genius-that-messes-with-genetic-code watching over them. He had a few choice words that would make a biker cringe.

OMG, that took a long time. I have to admit I had a serious case of writers block for a while on this one. Inspirations came when I was playing Tekken 5, that does not mean that the Mishima Co. is in any way related to this story. I was more interested in the devil gene part. So no, this is not going to become a Tekken crossover, sorry fans of that game but I think it will be better without that crutch. Anyways, hope you enjoyed this chapter.


	6. 6th Book of Amnesia

Ranma 1/2

----------------

On to Chapter 5, all characters not made up by me, belonging to the Ranma ½ cast, are not property of me. I do not own so I do not expect to gain in any way from using them in this story. This is just an innocent fan fiction. On to Chapter 6.

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Remembrance

Chapter 6

When she awoke, it was the middle of the next day and she found herself wrapped in the warmth of a blanket. It was getting to be the winter time and the heater in her house was absolutely the most horrible. She was still dressed in the shirt that Ranma had provided for her, it was red silk with yellow trimming and black buttons that matched the loops they went through. Currently the buttons were in a state that held the shirt together over his body so she would not expose herself accidentally. She could still smell the remains of his scent on the shirt, it was powerful but not overly so. It did not make her disgusted either, she had heard that some people had different smelling odor depending on what they ate and how they lived. Ranma's smelled a little like spice, just a hint, and she found herself enjoying the smell of his clothes. Under is smell she could make out some detergent. She let her hand explore the shirt until she came to a small hole, where she paused.

It may have been that she was trying to forget about last night, it may have been that she got caught up in the moment, whatever the case may have been her mind had gotten preoccupied too quickly for her liking. Now that she had found the hole she remembered what had happened last night, those parts she was conscious for at least. It was not as if she had known what she was doing and everyone there had seen that quickly, luckily for her. Getting up from the bed she wrapped the blanket around herself in a quick shield from the cold that tried to attack her. She padded softly into the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror, and what stared back at her looked like a stranger.

Her hair, while usually messed in the morning, was akin to that of the German scientist Einstein. It stuck out here and there and her brown eyes were pale to the point of almost being hazel. There were bags under her eyes from the stress of the night and not getting any nutrition to offset such stress. Her skin looked pale, lacking any color, less of a pale color than an ashen color and her hair was such a light brown that it almost looked red. With a small sight she turned on the water to her sink and let some of the cold water gather in her two cupped hands. She gathered the liquid and felt the oddly satisfying cool water on her skin, bringing it to her lips so she could drink of it. With a sigh she wiped the remaining water off her skin and took another handful to splash against her face.

"I need a warm shower," she said to herself.

There was no need for confirmation from anyone but she almost expected there to be someone behind her saying something. With a deep breath she turned to the shower, a small closet style one with white tile walls and a stainless steel showerhead, the type that has many different settings and is meant to save on water, and turned it on. She started out with the clear glass knob turned all the way to the hottest she could in order to warm the water up the fastest. The spraying sound was harsh in her ears, which seemed a little more sensitive than usual, but then so did all of her senses now that she thought about it, but she eventually got used to it. When the water was hot she turned it down to a comfortable temperature and slid in, letting the warmth flow over her body in warm rivulets that spread the warmth to her aching muscles and relaxed her

Moving her head under the showerhead she let the water soak into her hair and massaged her scalp to work it in. Once she was done there she grabbed some shampoo and squeezed some into her hair, washing her hair with the sweet fragranced hair soap. The smell relaxed her even more, she had always been aware that her shampoo was scented but now the smell engulfed her. After a few minutes of washing her hair she rinsed it out and ran her hands through it a few more times to make sure it was clean. Nabiki then took some body soap and ran it across her body, allowing it to mix with the water and create bubbles across her body. As she moved her hands across her body and scrubbed her body down she pressed down on her muscles and forced the knots out of her now less tense muscles. It took a good hour for her to finish and when she was, she turned the water off and the sudden cool air left her shivering with goose bumps across her body. Quickly she reached for a towel and sent its soft absorbent body across her body to soak up the water. Once she was dry for the most part, Nabiki pulled on a cloth robe that hung by the shower, picked up the blanket, and walked back to her room where she found a surprise.

"Hey," A familiar smiling face said as she exited the bathroom, "You look a lot better after that shower. How you feeling?"

Nabiki smiled at the raven haired man and replied, "Well I feel better, why are you here?"

Ranma chuckled, his blue eyes seeming to sparkle, "Well I wanted to check on you. I was worried about you."

Nabiki looked down at the man's chest, then down at his still bandaged midsection, "So are you feeling alright, you're starting to look like a mummy."

Ranma rubbed the bandages absently, "They should be able to come off soon, and it's still a little tender. If you're still worried about the scratch you gave me, well that's already healed."

Nabiki nodded, "That's good."

"So, you hungry, Biki-chan?"

The woman nodded, "Yeah, I feel pretty weak."

The man smiled, "That's good to know because I made you a big meal, get dressed and come down whenever you're ready. Oh, by the way, I called you're work and told them you came down with something and had to take the week off."

"You didn't call my boss, did you?" Nabiki asked hesitantly, "That woman is the biggest gossiper in our company. And those other hens are not far behind her."

Ranma shrugged, "Well they had to be told something, and you know how bad I lie so I just bent the truth."

Nabiki sighed, "Don't get so defensive, I'm not blaming you, there was no way for you to know. Now if you don't mind I'll get changed."

The man stood and walked over to her, "I do mind actually."

"What do you mean?" Nabiki stared into his intense eyes in wonder, he was serious about this.

Suddenly he embraced her tightly, though not uncomfortably so, and whispered in her ear, "I'll apologize for this ahead of time, but you're so sexy right now.".

With those words he planted a huge passionate kiss on the woman's lips and after a surprised pause the kiss was matched with equal passion. The two began to get lost in the moment as their hands began to roam around one another's bodies. Their pawing lasted about fifteen minutes before they finally stopped and stood across from each other gasping for air. The scene was one that had not been common for some time but now the lust and love that had been held inside of them had come to a peak. In Ranma's mind it was just the fact that there was a chance he could loose the woman forever that caused him to hold her like he did next.

"Ranma," Nabiki said as she looked up from her position in her arms, "Is there something wrong?"

The man spoke softly, void of the bravado she was used to in his voice, "I'm just afraid that I'll lose you. Promise not to leave me again."

"I would love to do that, Ranma," Nabiki said quietly, "But I'll have to say that I won't leave you if it's under my power to stop it."

The man nodded, "That's enough for me. Thank you."

Nabiki smiled at him and responded, "No problem, now let me get changed so that I can change and eat."

"We'll be waiting for you, hurry," Ranma called as he walked out the door.

As the man left she turned and threw on some clothes so she could quickly get down stairs. She knew they were waiting for her so that they could eat and she did not want to keep them waiting for her sake. Plus she had the day off so she did not have to worry so much about her appearance. As she walked out of her room and clothes down the stairs she was careful to make sure there were no stray toys laying on the stairs before she started down. Last time Ranma had been there so she had been lucky, there was no guarantee that she would be as lucky without him there. She proceeded slowly down the stairs and when she got to the bottom headed for the kitchen where they were all waiting for her, as she had thought they would be doing. There was one unexpected person at the table, actually there was more than one but the one she was really surprised to see was who she focused on.

"Akane," Nabiki exclaimed, "What are you doing here?"

Ranma sighed, "Look, I have a feeling that this will turn out bad if we go though this right now, so let's all eat right now and you two can talk later."

Nabiki nodded, "Alright."

The other person at the table who was not normally present spoke up, "You know, this is really good, where'd you learn to cook like this, sir."

Ranma rolled his eyes, "Look for the last time, don't call me 'sir', Akemi."

The girl with two toned hair looked appropriately embarrassed, "Sorry, s- Ranma."

"I guess you'll just have to get used to this life," Ranma said.

Everyone ate and Ranma decided to clean the dishes while Akane and Nabiki talked to one another. Akemi took Hitomi outside and played with her while everyone else was occupied with their task. It took a lot of silence, standing on the porch at the rear of the house, before either of the sisters even started to talk to each other and even that came out stuttering at first. Nabiki did not trust herself to talk without getting angry and Akane was not sure how to start without making her sister angry. So the two just stood facing each other, outside on the patio with the warm sun shining though the few grey clouds that floated across the sky.

"I know that it was wrong to marry him," Akane said finally, deciding that no matter what this was going to end in an argument but hoping for the best anyways, "I just did not know that he would come back. I thought he was gone for good, and we were growing apart anyways."

Nabiki took a few deep breaths, she felt anger rise but she would do her best to keep it down, "I know, I heard the story from Ranma, it still makes me mad that you would not at least tell your sisters about this. We would have supported you."

"I know but the way you were acting at the time made it seem that you were both conspiring against me," Akane looked down at her hands as she started to wring them in a nervous habit kind of way, "I felt I had nobody to trust, and that's what drove to me Ryouga in the first place."  
Nabiki nodded, "We were all trying to push you into the engagement, but I had my own agenda. I would have liked to know that I did not have to go through with it though."

"It was all a misunderstanding," Akane said quietly, "I wish that I had told you now. I'm so sorry, Nabiki."

The woman with short brown hair closed her eyes and sighed, "I'm no good at this grudge holding thing. I love all of my sisters but sometimes you just piss me off so bad, Akane. I'm glad you found your happiness."

A knock came from the door and the two of them looked to see Ranma standing there with an apologetic look on his face, "I hope I'm not interrupting anything, Kasumi just stopped by with an important message."

The two girls looked at each other in confusion, "We'll be right there," Akane said.

Ranma nodded and headed back inside while the two girls waited for the door to shut before they spoke again, "I wonder what that important message would be," Akane stated.

Nabiki shook her head, "I don't know but we had better find out, we'll talk about this a little later."

The two girls walked inside and found Kasumi standing in the middle of the living room with Ranma across from her looking a little disturbed to say the least. Akemi was look on in confusion while holding on to Hitomi's hand as the little girl seemed to be wondering what was going on. The two women who just entered walked up to the woman and stopped in front of her before she spoke.

"I came by because I just got this a letter," Kasumi spoke in a calm voice but she was quiet pale and shaking, "I think you should read it."

Nabiki took the letter and opened it so she could read it, and after a second of scanning over it a few times handed over to Akane with stiff movements that belied her outer calm. After Akane read it, her reaction was more outspoken and angry than the others reaction had been.

"They have got to be kidding," The outburst was so loud the walls seemed to rattle with the air escaping, "Those bastards, I will not forgive them for this, there is no way."

Ranma sighed and looked down at his now clenched fist before he spoke his next words, "Unfortunately they have… I'll go back."

Everyone gathered around gasped, "Ranma, you can't!" Akemi yelled.

The man looked over at her sadly, "You read the letter, and I have enough power to go against a couple of them but not their whole army. You and I together might be able to but people would still get hurt. This is the only way for things to work out for everyone."

"Ranma…" Kasumi could not trust herself to speak anymore.

The next surprise came in a resounding slap across the face to the martial artist followed by a brown haired girl flinging herself at the man, "You idiot, you're just going to leave again? You're going to abandon me and Hitomi just because of some stupid organization! How could you do that to me? After all you promised to me you're just going to leave!"

The man went quiet for a while after that before he spoke again, "I know, I just don't want any of you hurt. Don't you understand."

"You don't want anyone hurt?" Nabiki was yelling through teary eyes now, "How much have we been through with you? We have been through so much and not gotten hurt, what makes you think now is different."

The man seemed ashamed, "You're right, but what do you want me to do? I don't want to see any of you hurt."

"What makes you think they won't hurt us if you leave?" Nabiki asked.

Akemi nodded, "You know as well as I do their perfectly capable of that."

Ranma ran his hands through his hair before he sighed, "Fine, I expect we have little time after they get the message that I'm not coming back. Kasumi, you and Doc find a safe place to hide and take Hitomi with you. Akemi, you will train with me and Ryouga when he gets here. We'll need every fighter we know of, that includes Shampoo. As for you Nabiki, I need to show you how to control that power inside of you."

The woman nodded, "Alright, does that mean you are going to let me fight?"

Ranma nodded, "I don't want to, but if you can control that power of yours a little then you can fight while you're still sane. That would be a great help to us in the upcoming battle."

Her training began a few hours after that, she met Ranma out in the back of the house where he was moving through one of his practice forms to focus his energy for the upcoming task. She was not sure what form he was doing as she had never really gotten that much into martial arts, but it seemed to be a form far more complicated than she would ever learn. The horrible part was that he was not even breaking a sweat from the movements of the form. Every little kick, feint, and punch seemed to be timed perfectly and the movements themselves were as smooth as flowing water. As he leapt into the air with a spinning kick landing with his left back leg bent to support his weight and his right leg at an angle so that it touch the ground in front of him he stood and wiped his forehead as if he had been sweating and blew out a breath.

"So how did you like that?" The man asked with a smirk.

Though she was caught off guard at first, she did not even see him look at her, she answered easily, "Well it was very impressive."

"Nah, I was a little off, I was not very focused," Ranma said with a little dismay, "Anyway, enough of that, let's start you're training. This will be meditation exercises so you must follow what I say closely. If you don't I can't guide you through it and you may fail in you're goal."

The woman nodded, "Alright."

"Now close you're eyes and imagine yourself in a calm place, the most comfortable place you can think of," Ranma saw her follow his instructions and continued, "Okay, now imagine there is someone across from you, someone you don't know, imagine this is the other you," He paused for a second and he saw Nabiki's face flinch and he continued, "Alright, now maintain you calmness. You must keep control, look at the other you and touch it. This is part of you, accept it, keep calm there is nothing to be afraid of."

At that point Nabiki lost all track of what Ranma was saying, as soon as she touched the other form of herself the world spun around her. The once faceless form of herself suddenly gained her face and she could see it smirking at her. She remembered what Ranma said and kept herself calm, she had not been told about this but she assumed that it was because it happened different for everyone. Nabiki reached out toward the form of herself and found her hand being held back by the arm.

"Hello, me" the other form said as she grinned evilly, "Did you come to purge me?"

Nabiki stood silently in thought, had she come to get rid of this form, is that what she had come here in the first place to do? After a short line of thinking she determined that this was not the goal she wished to accomplish. What she wanted was control of her other form, she did not want it to just come out randomly. To do this she had to manifest her will and transform though, and for that she needed confidence in herself. Nabiki looked defiantly at the form across from her.

"I came to make sure you don't take me over without me wanting it," Nabiki said this in a challenging voice.

The other form of her let go of her arm and smiled genuinely at her, "I like you, but this face is all wrong for me. You see, this is not the real me."

Nabiki blinked and narrowed her eyes, "Then what is?"

For a second there was a shimmer from the other form before her face, height, and build changed into something that was very different, "This is my real form, you see, I am a succubus. As for how I became part of you, it's complicated, when I came to this world I had just enough power to get here. Due to a fatal miscalculation I misjudged the amount of power needed, because of that I was captured by the company you were taken to and sealed until you came along to use as a host."  
"So you're just using my body?" Nabiki asked with folded arms, the idea obviously not appealing to her.

"Well you could say that," the succubus said, "Of course it's not exactly my choice. The way they inserted my essence into you was not very effective though, too much stress causes you to come out. The only way to control me is to improve the amount of stress you're body can take, and I bet that hot piece of man meat can help you with that."

Nabiki had to choke back a laugh, who the hell talked like that, it was like being in a porn movie, "Yeah, I bet he could, but you also have to allow me to control you, don't you?"

The succubus nodded, "I see you are smart also, yes, and I will allow you to but for right now stress will still bring me out."

"What do you mean 'smart also' and why did you not come out earlier when I changed?" Nabiki asked.

The sex demon sighed, "I meant you're hot, and I did not come out earlier because I was too weak at the time, so you instead went into a trance state, a nature state of protection for our kind."

Nabiki nodded, "I see," then she stared intensely at the succubus, "I'm not like that by the way. Don't get any ideas about trying anything with my body."

The demon laughed, "Sorry, I scared you, we demons can't do that unless you wish it to happen. It's kind of a caveat of being a demon, so don't worry."

The woman breathed a sigh of relief, "Thank goodness, so we understand each other, right?"

"Yeah, don't worry," The succubus said, "Just practice to make yourself better. I'll take care of the rest."

"Thank you," Nabiki said and the world around her shimmered as she opened her eyes and saw Ranma staring at her with concern.

"You okay," He asked.

The woman nodded, "Yeah, it was… interesting."

Ranma grinned, "Good, sounds like it worked."

"Uh, Ranma," Nabiki wanted to ask something but seemed hesitant.

"What is it Nabiki?"

The woman breathed deeply and let it out, "Could you help me get in shape, it's one thing that will help me keep the other form from coming out."

He seemed to be taken back for a second before he patted her shoulder and nodded, "Yeah, whenever you want to start just ask. Oh, just don't expect me to go easy on you."

"I would never dream of it," Nabiki said sarcastically.


	7. 7th Bood of Amnesia

Ranma 1/2

----------------

On to Chapter 5, all characters not made up by me, belonging to the Ranma ½ cast, are not property of me. I do not own so I do not expect to gain in any way from using them in this story. This is just an innocent fan fiction. On to Chapter 6.

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Remembrance

Chapter 7

Ranma was sitting down on the couch when she found him, he seemed to be deep in thought about something. His eyes were squinting hard and he had a hand on his chin, his eyes stared blankly at the air in front of him. Nabiki sat down next to him but he did not seem to notice, so she cleared her throat to try to get his attention. Still the martial artist did not so much as twitch and for a second she could swear she was looking at a statue. Nabiki sat a while longer before she became fed up with waiting for him to acknowledge her and slapped the back of his head. His head leaned forward for a second before it snapped back and he turned to glare at her.

"What'd you do that for?" The man asked with irritation.

"I don't know, you seemed to be out of it and you wouldn't show any sign of me being here," Nabiki answered with her own irritation.

The martial artist looked a little sheepish, "Um, sorry, I was just thinking about a few things."

"Like what?"

Ranma sighed, "Like the fact that I was found as a male, even though I had just fallen in the river. There's also the fact that even if somehow I didn't change then, I would have some time during my stay at the hospital. Somehow it would have happened but there was not even a mention of it."

Nabiki nodded, "Now that I think about it, that is kind of weird, and then there's the fact that this agency that's after you could have killed you in the hospital."

Shaking his head at that, Ranma answered her question, "No, they are not like that, this agency is not evil really. They are very aggressive, true, but they don't kill without giving some kind of choice. There is a chance that some of them had infiltrated the hospital in fact, but that would just be to make sure their investment did not get out of their hands."

Ranma sensed a presence behind him and jumped to his feet only to face a man standing next to Hitomi. He was a tall man with dark skin and a shaved head, he wore a suit as if he was a business man but the martial artist could tell another martial artist when he saw one. The man chuckled slightly and held his hands up to indicate he did not come here to fight.

"Long time no see," The man said, "It seems the stories of amnesia were true but I was sure that you would remember your old friend, Jack."

There was a sneer then, "I got my memory back but I don't remember you, how did you get in here?"

The man pointed to Hitomi, "She let me in, she's a sweet little girl. Despite what you think I did not come to fight you or take Nabiki back. I'm here because I need to explain some things to you. I am not an enemy but an informant."

Ranma lowered his guard, slightly, "Go on."

Jack nodded, "I heard you talking just now and I have the answers you're looking for. I'll just let you know that we are a lot of places that you may not know, for instance, it is entirely possible that we had an operative follow you to make sure that if something went wrong you were eliminated. Unfortunately they only accomplished the first part of their job which was to change you back to your male form since it is the only body that is not on file and would not lead back to us. That man was killed not because you did not die though, he was killed because the director has no patience for those who do not follow orders. Of course he was given a choice but he did not take the one that would allow him to survive."

Ranma had been blown away at first but everything was slowly falling into place, "So the only reason I stayed male in the hospital was because you guys did not want my identity known."

Jack nodded, "That is the main reason, yes. Like you said, we are not evil just very aggressive. Normally.

"What do you mean normally?" Nabiki asked.

The man let out a deep sigh, his bass filled voice making sound more like a growl, "Well, the director has been different lately. I don't know if it's stress or what but he seems to be… evil. Something has changed at least."

"So what does this have to do with us?" Ranma asked, he did not like where this was going at all.

Jack answered strait, "I want you to try to find out why he has changed. Well actually it's him and the whole upper level of leaders. They are afraid of you, Ranma, because you are the best we have. You are the only one who can do this, I know it, and I believe that you know it also, and before you say no, you should realize that if it is what I think it is, Japan, no, the whole world could be in danger."

The man stood in silence for a while before he let his guard down fully and shook his head, "I don't know, I have people to think about, Nabiki, Hitomi, Akane, Kasumi, will they be safe?"  
"That's what I'm here for," Jack said with a cocky grin that matched Ranma on his best day, "I know I don't' look like much but I can put up a good fight. Just keep in mind that there are others who are totally loyal to the director so they will not hesitate to follow even the most insane orders. If you do this be very careful."

Ranma was weighing the choices, on one hand he would have to leave everyone in the safety of a man that only claimed to be his friend. On the other hand if he did not do this he would have to deal with not just a few people coming after him but an army of people that were bent on taking over the whole world. He turned to see Jack watching him intently, he needed to make a decision but there was one thing he wanted to do before he decided fully.

"You want to fight me," Jack said finally, "To gage how good I am."

Ranma blinked and nodded, "Yeah, but how?"

"Did I know," Jack just grinned, "I told you we were friends, we worked together on a few missions and I'm good a reading people, and you never had the best poker face."

"Well?"

Jack nodded, "The training hall at the ruined Tendo house where you used to live, will that suffice."

Try as he might, Ranma could not suppress he astonishment, that had been exactly where he had intended to suggest fighting, "Yeah, in about an hour."

Jack nodded and bowed before he turned and walked out the door the way he had come. Ranma watched him go with a feeling of nervousness that he had not felt in a long time, however it was not one that told him of immediate danger. This told him that he should be careful as not all was as it seemed with this encounter. He looked over to Nabiki and she looked a little nervous herself.

"If you don't want to see the fight…" Ranma paused and let the sentence die on his lips.

The woman shook her head, "I'll come and watch the fight. I think it will be good for me to see you fight to remove my own doubts."

The man nodded and the group walked out back where the two men faced each other and waited. When Nabiki realized what they were waiting for she nodded and signaled for the two of them to start with a downward motion of her arm. When her arm came down, and no later, the two of them launched into a flurry of attacks. Ranma started with a simple punch which was blocked easily and countered with a quick front kick that the other man also blocked. Jack launched a kick at the man again and Ranma ducked under it before he grabbed the leg and stopped its momentum. The dark man smiled and brought another foot up to target Ranma again, which the man had not bee expecting so he let go of the leg in favor of rolling backwards and performing a handspring back towards Jack.

The man sidestepped and went to elbow drop Ranma as he passed but the other martial artist grabbed the waist of the man as he passed and brought his legs up behind the dark man's back so that he was upside down with his legs twisted around Jacks neck. At this the man went to fall back but Ranma quickly inverted himself so that he was on top of the man and used him as a springboard to leap back and land on his face. Ranma looked up to notice Jack rolling to his feet and removing his now broken sunglasses with a grin. Ranma noticed something then, the man's corneas had just the lightest of color in them, his eyes were milky.

"You're blind?" Ranma asked in surprised.

The man grinned, "Does it matter?"

With that he rushed towards Ranma who dodged the punch aimed at his head by inches and let loose with an elbow to the man's chest. He followed that up with an elbow to his back that dropped him to the ground with a thud so hard he bounced off the ground slightly. Even with this the bald man rolled quickly to the side until he had enough room to leap to his feet and once again he was on the offensive, launching kicks and punches which Ranma blocked and answered with his own attacks.

"Time for the next level of attack," Jack said as he leaps back and suddenly his body became covered in an aura of energy.

Ranma blinked and shrugged, summoning his own aura, the two rushed at one another once again. Fists and legs met arms with enough force to shattered a good sized boulder but the two men held their own against the force the other produced. Ranma for his part, was realizing that this was a fight that would have to be fought with skill and not power so he changed his method of attack and let his aura die before launching himself into the air and dropping an aerial axe-kick on the man's shoulder. Jack dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes and barely blocked a kick aimed at his side. Still he was sent sliding across the lawn and hit the fence on the other side of the yard, dust and debris erupted around him.

Slowly Jack stood and whipped some blood from the side of his mouth, still he was grinning, "Okay, that's good, I'm done."

Ranma nodded and his serious face was suddenly replaced by a grin, "You're good, that was the best fight I've had in a while."

Jack nodded and took a knee, "Thanks, it seems you are the best. I will protect your family. Just remember to be careful."

Ranma nodded, "Right, so what is it you want me to investigate for you?"

"There is a secret room in the same warehouse that you lady friend was held in that no one besides the boss enters," Jack said, "I want you to break in and find the secret of that room. I believe the secret to how the boss acts lies there."

Ranma nodded and ran a hand through his bangs, absently scratching his scalp as he did so, "Okay, well I see why you came to me, but do you know what I'm looking for?"

Jack shook his bald head, "No, but I have a feeling that when you see it you will know it. Sorry for the lack of intelligence."

"No problem," Ranma said absently, "Take care of the family, I'll be back."

Nabiki spoke up for the first time since the two had finished the fight, "Ranma, please be careful and come back to me."

The man smiled easily at her, "No problem Nabiki, just take care of Hitomi until I get back and don't worry. After all, this big guys here to help," Ranma indicated to Jack with a casual nod.

If he had let them know that truth, that he was just as worried if not more worried, then anyone there, there would be no going. If he did not go there would be no way for him to find out what was going on behind the scenes. He needed to find a reason for the attacks, and a reason for his joining the company that had cloned him. He did not need to pack anything, he knew where he was going and it was not far. He jogged down the street, not wanting to tire himself out but at the same time wanting to arrive quickly, when a blur of red and black hair dove in front of him.

Ranma jumped a short distance to the rear and landed easily and smoothly in a defensive stance. It did not take long for him to drop the stance however when he noticed that it was not an enemy that stood in front of him, but a friend. This friend however had a look on her face that was quiet stern and she seemed determined to stop his progress.

"What are you doing here?" Ranma said in a confused tone.

Akemi aimed a look of anger at him and said to him in a tone that was not at all that nice, "Where the hell do you think you're going?"

The man was taken back for a second before he shrugged and drew his mouth into a emotionless line, "Doing some investigation work."

The girl with multi-colored hair made a sound as her tounge clicked through her closed teeth, "Do you think I'm a stupid little girl, Ranma? I heard everything you were talking about just now."

With a wave of his hand the martial artist continued on, "Then you know that this is just for me, do not even try to go with me."

The girl growled and socked him in the side of the face, "Don't even try to be macho, just shut the hell up, I'm going with you whether you want me to or not."

The man sighed and rubbed the area where she had punched him, "Fine, just do me a favor and don't be dumb. Stupid girl."

Akemi stuck her tounge out at the man and the two of them continued on towards the factory that Ranma had infiltrated earlier. When they arrived it was just beginning to be sunset and the two of them slipped in quickly when the guards switched and were busy doing a turnover. Only one of the more tired guards saw the two of them and he was to busy trying to stay awake for the last few minutes of his watch to think anything of it. Who would be dumb enough to run through an open courtyard anyways. The guard yawned and his head bobbed before he fell over on his face with a thud just has his relief walked up to him.

Across the way where Ranma and Akemi had just done what the guard had thought them too stupid to do, the two of them were kneeling down behind a crate with a look of intense concentration on their faces. It would not be long before the guard that saw them reported what he had seen, their only hope was that it would be written off as the man being too tired to account for much. Ranma scanned the area, listening closely for any sound that might indicate a guard was taking a round near him. When he was sure that it was okay for the two of them to move, Ranma motioned with his hand and the two of them ran into a door just as it shut and ducked behind a wall just as the door was starting to close behind one of the guards that had been relieved. The male of the group looked around the corner before he spoke softly to his female companion.

"Alright, I'm going into the facility, you go towards the security room and take out the system," Ranma finished and stood.

The girl nodded, "Alright, just keep in mind that I'm not too sure where the security room is in this factory."

Ranma smirked, "Follow the guard that just got relieved, he should lead you there."

The girl nodded and followed after the guard, leaving Ranma to take off on his own path, leading him towards the room that he had been informed of. He was a little worried about Akemi leaving off on her own but it was the only way that he could be sure that the security was taken out properly. He put any thoughts of danger to the girl out of his head and focused on his goal and keeping himself out of trouble. Hopefully this would go quickly and he could get out without anyone realizing that he was even here.

Elsewhere, Akemi had started her tracking of the guard as he wound his way though the hallways. She was glad she had taken Ranma's advice and followed him because with the amounts of twists and turns the man had taken it would have been impossible for her to find the right room on her own. Especially without prior information as to where the room was. Soon the guard stopped at a room and the door opened when he swiped his card in a reader just to the left of the door. The girl followed in quickly behind him and just made it as the door closed on her. When she entered however there was just a little problem with the room. It was full of more guards that were all staring intently at her as she stared back at each one of them in turn. Finally she sighed and burst into action, leaping forward and knocking out the guard that was about to hit an alarm. She then quickly broke the alarm and continued to beating the stuffing out of the remaining guards. Working quickly she dropped each guard one by one, even one with a full helmet on that made her hand feel like it was being pierced by a million needles afterwards, and cracked the helmet. Akemi quickly set to disabling the security system while monitoring Ranma's progress as he went through the building. So intent was she on her task that she did not notice the guard she had hit earlier, without the helmet, slowly regaining consciousness and pointing a gun at her. Only when he spoke did she turn toward him.

"You're an agent, are you not?" The guard said in a deep gravely voice.

Akemi snorted in a very unladylike manner and folded her hands across her chest, "And what if I am, that gun will do nothing for you."

The guard ginned over his bloody mouth and pulled the trigger, the ammo flew towards the girl and even when she dodged she felt something pierce her arm. Landing with a roll and coming to her knees she hissed in pain. That was impossible, she should have dodged that bullet. Looking down at her right bicep where the projectile had hit she realized that it was a tiny dart. She almost grinned in relief, before the man spoke again seeming to get weaker with every word.

"Heh, you stupid girl," The guard said, "That dart will be your undoing, it contains the same transformation serum that we used on the woman you two freed earlier. Since your DNA is already altered you will not even need much time to change. I have beaten you!"

Akemi growled and pulled the dart out, before she walked over and let loose with a hard punch into the man's face. She felt his jaw displace under her fist and smiled as the guards eyes rolled back in his head. He was not dead but he would be in some pain for quiet some time. Returning to the console she had stood at just previously, Akemi looked at the monitor and pushed a few buttons, stopping the security system from sensing Ranma just as he opened the door to the room he had been seeking out. As she watched she started to feel a burning in her arm and looked to see a rash starting to spread from the wound she had received. She was not sure if she believed the man about the serum in the dart, but whatever it was hurt like hell. Still she fought though the pain and concentrated on keeping her partner safe, a bit later Ranma came out of the room and gave a thumbs up to the camera. Akemi hissed again as the pain got worse and her arm was practically fully inflamed in red now. In fact there was another strange coloring starting to show. Akemi growled, kicked the unconscious guard that had given her the wound one last time and ran out the door.

She did not know how she would explain what had happened, her black short sleeved shirt made it hard to hide such a wound, but she had to come up with something. If she told him the truth he would worry to much for her and she would not have that happen. Luckily he was so focused on leaving that he did not even see the wound when the two of them met up. The left the same way they had gotten in, without the advantage of the guards doing turnover it was a little harder than before but he still managed to make it outside the gate safely. Once they were a good ways away from the factory, the two of them slowed down and Akemi breathed a sigh of relief. The running had not done anything to help her wound and in fact it probably sped up the effects of the serum.

"So did you get what you needed?" Akemi asked.

Ranma nodded and sighed, "Yeah, but I'm not happy. This will make things a lot more difficult."

The girl winced slightly but caught herself and tried to cover it from Ranma, "I think I twisted my ankle a little earlier."

She was lucky that it was dark and the wound was on her right arm while Ranma was on her left side. It was enough to hid the wound that was still spreading across her arm and was starting to make its way onto her neck and shoulders. It was hot too, which made it more than a little uncomfortable. Akemi shook her head to clear it and tried to focus on what Ranma was talking about.

"What is it that you found?"

The male martial artist looked into the distance as he spoke, "I found that he was doing experiments with demons. I didn't believe it at first but I found that somehow he managed to summon demons from another plane. Actually that was not the only thing he summoned, he came across a few other creatures but they proved to hard to control. One example that was given was this fox that he ended up killing. The kept some DNA though."

"I see." Something about that last statement bothered her but she was not sure was it was.

Finally they arrived at the house again and Akemi went to open the door, as she did with her right hand, pain like she had never felt burst through her entire body and she screamed and fell to the floor. Rolling around she felt the her entire body get hot as the rash spread across her whole body. In the background she heard Ranma yelling out her name and tried to respond but all that came out was a gut wrenching scream. Finally the screaming stopped and Akemi felt herself drop into darkness, as if she was detached from her body.

It was much later when she woke and she realized she was in bed with a blanket over her. The pain was gone and she felt normal enough, but something felt just a little off about her body. Opening her eyes she felt a weight on her legs and looked down to see Ranma sleeping, leaned forward in a chair. She felt a smile grace her lips and reached out to wake him up when she saw her hand she paused though. It was strangely covered in reddish hair up to her forearm and the fingernails were longer than usual. The other strange thing was that her fingernails where also curved downward and thicker than normal. They looked more like claws.

Akemi shifted slightly and placed a pillow softly under Ranma's head so as not to wake him up. Sliding off the side of the bed she looked at her feet and saw they they too had undergone the same transformation as her hands. The same reddish hair come up to the top of her calf. She walked to the bathroom that was attached to the room she was in and looked at herself in the mirror, and almost let out a scream. Her once multicolored hair that she used to be proud of, mostly because it made her that much different from all of the other mindless clones, was now red and reached all of the way down to the center of her back. The hair had been in a pigtail like Ranma's but now it hung loose after the hair growth had been to much for it to hold. Her face was the same, her same blue eyes stared back at her but out of her head like two great spires stood what appeared to be animal ears that matched the rest of the hair that had grown on her. Akemi had gathered enough evidence here to realize that the hair was actually fur.

The woman reached back and touch the side of her head where her ears should be and found that they were gone, replaced by these ears that stood higher on her head. She tried to twitch one ear and the animal ear on her head moved slightly. It was almost enough to make her faint. Then something brushed against her leg as if it was a child tired of being ignored and when she looked down she saw what she could only deduce in her current frame of mind as being a bushy tail that was coming out of her backside. At this point, Akemi had taken all she could and let out a scream that was enough to wake everyone in the house up.

When they all came running, they stopped short seeing her standing in the room with a scared look on her face. Ranma blinked and opened his mouth to say something but stopped short. Nabiki covered her mouth in horror, Jack stood stiffly without any emotion showing and little Hitomi looked like she wanted to scream also.

"Who are you?" Ranma finally managed to get out.

Akemi blinked at him and suddenly felt like crying, if the person who was the closest to her did not recognize her what was the point, "Ranma..."

The man blinked before a look of horror came over his face, "Akemi? What happened."

Akemi did not say anything, could not say anything, she ran forward and grabbed the man. Ranma was surprised at first before he realized that she was crying and he returned the embrace and gave her a reassuring pat on the back to let her know that he was okay. In his mind he was thinking about the strangeness of this whole thing, first Nabiki had been changed but that had not been permanent. It was a shared form, why then was this girl not able to change back to her original form? Or, if she was, how did they do it?

Nabiki felt for the girl, she wanted to try and comfort the girl as she was the only other one who had experienced a change like she had. The difference was that she had been able to change back and, at least from what she had seen so far, Akemi was not able to change back to her original form. The woman frowned at the thought that the company, the same one that had captured her and changed her, had struck again. There had to be a reason that they were doing all of this. After what Ranma had told her last night she was sure something big was being planned but what it was could not be yet deduced from what evidence had been collected.

Jack sighed, "I'm sorry for what had happened, this never would have come to pass if I had not asked you to go."

Ranma disengaged himself from the girls arms and looked back towards the man, "No, it's not your fault, its those bastards that developed the formula that are at fault for this."

Akemi wiped her eyes and sniffed, "I shouldn't have come, now I cause you to be concerned over me. I'm sorry."

"I think you look cool," Hitomi spoke up, they had all forgotten that she was there until then, "why are you upset about it?"

The girl looked down at the child with a smile and nodded, "I'm always surprised at the innocence of children. Thanks Hitomi, you're a good kid."

There was a sudden crash from the closet and everyone turned suddenly towards it with a serious expression. Not one person in the room expected anyone to be in there or anything to cause a crash to come from it. Everyone was instantly on their guard as they waited for whoever, or whatever, it was to show itself. The door flung opened and when it did Ranma wanted to fall over laughing.

A man with a yellow and black bandanna holding his black hair back fell out of the closet covered in dirt and clothes. It was rather strange to behold but only Ranma could truly say that he would expect no less from such a person. Ryouga Hibiki stood up with an embarrassed look on his face and laughed nervously with a hand behind his head. Ranma just shook his head with a smile.

"Well man," Ranma said in amusement, "You never cease to amaze me."

Ryouga tried to compose himself, failing miserably given his situation, and tried to explain, "Well I was walking across a desert and suddenly a door formed in front of me. I opened it and everything went dark and then I was here all of sudden."

"You can get lost anywhere," Ranma said.

The man shrugged before he looked around the room and then finally he came to rest on Akemi, "Whose the foxy lady?"

The girl was taken back by the question, "Foxy?"

Nodding, Ryouga made a motion with his fingers wiggling at the sides of his head like ears, "Yeah, as in the animal."

"Ah," Akemi said, slightly disappointedly, "It's not my normal look."

Ryouga nodded, "I see, so your company has struck once again, eh Ranma?"

The man nodded sternly, "Yes, and we should really discuss how we are going to deal with them."

Jack nodded in agreement, "You are right, we need to make some plans for what is coming."

"Is something wrong?" Ryouga asked in confusion, "I feel like I'm out of the loop here."

Ranma nodded, "I'll fill you in while we discuss our plans. Until then, it's late and we have a long day ahead of use, as cliché as it is, everyone needs to get some sleep. Especially you Akemi."

The girl nodded and everyone headed out of the room towards where they stayed in the house. It did not take long for anyone to go to sleep as it had been a tiring day and they had already been asleep in the first place. Nabiki fell asleep first and Ranma sighed and he studied her form, before falling asleep himself with his arms wrapped around her body. Ryouga was sleeping on the floor using a bedroll next to the couch that Akemi chose to sleep on, Jack was set up on a mattress in Hitomi's room, he would be damned if he would take the chance of anyone trying to get to the girl. A long day awaited all and there would not be a lot of chances to get sleep later. So the house fell silent and waited the coming day.


End file.
